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399 

Fairbairn,  A. 

M.  1838-1912. 

Catholicism 

Digitized  by 

the  Internet  Archive 

in  2015 

https://archive.org/details/catholicismromanOOfair_0 


Catholicism 

Roman  and  Anglican 


CATHOLICISM:  Roman  and 
Anglican  '  By  A*.  M.  Fairbairn 
m.a.  d.d.  ll.d.  Principal  of  Mansfield 
College  Oxford  <j£  ^ 


NEW  YORK:  CHARLES 
SCRIBNER'S  SONS  ^ 
153  FIFTH  AVENUE  1899 


TO 

My  Friends  and  Colleagues 

THE  TUTORS  OF 
MANSFIELD  COLLEGE  OXFORD 


Contents 


i 

PACES 

THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION   .  1-47 

§  1.  Distinction  between  Religion  and  Church  .      .  1-9 

1.  The  Churches  as  means  ;  Religion  as  end. 

2.  Have  the  Churches  fulfilled  their  mission  ? 

§  2.  Relation  between  Theology  and  Polity      .      .  9-14 

1.  Methods  of  study. 

2.  The  idea  of  Religion  fundamental. 

§  3.  The  Idea  of  Religion  14-22 

1.  Analysis  of  Religion. 

2.  Principles  involved. 

i.  Determinative  idea,  the  idea  of  God. 

ii.  Causal  idea,  God's  relation  to  man. 

iii.  The  religious  man  and  society  as  realizing  this 

relation. 

3.  Religion  lives  in  the  light  of  eternity. 

§4.  The  Ideal  of  Religion  embodied  in  Jesus  Christ.  22-32 

1.  The  contrast  with  the  priest  and  scribe. 

2.  Love  of  God  and  love  of  man. 

3.  The  Kingdom  of  God  and  its  citizens. 

5.  The  Ideal  of  Christ  and  the  Christian  Churches  32-40 

1.  The  ideal  of  the  Anglican  Revival. 

2.  Criticism  of  this  as  an  interpretation  of  the  religious 

ideal. 

3.  Good  ecclesiasticism,  bad  Christianity. 

§  6.  How  the  Ideal  is  to  be  realized    ....  40-47 

1.  The  conversion  of  man. 

2.  The  regeneration  of  the  race. 

II 

CATHOLICISM  AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  48-93 
§  1.  The  Question  to  be  discussed  4S-51 

§2.  The  need  of  a  Relevant  Apology  for  the  Faith  51-61 

1.  Apologetic  must  recognize  current  principles  of  thought. 

2.  Modern  doubt  the  creation  of  honest  inquiry. 

vii 


viii 


CONTENTS 


§  3.  Deism  and  Apologetics  in  Catholic  France  and 
Protestant  England  

1.  Scepticism  victorious  in   France  ;    Apologetics  in 

England. 

2.  Political  and  religious  questions  identified  in  France, 

distinct  in  England. 

3.  Doubt  still  most  radical  in  Catholic  countries. 

4.  Roman  Catholic  apologetic  for  religion  must  be  an 

apologetic  for  the  Church. 

§  4.  The  Anglo-Catholic  Movement  and  Religion  in 
England   

1.  Universal  influence  of  the  movement. 

2.  The  regeneration  of  the  English  Church. 

3.  Catholicism  Anglicized. 

§  5.  Whether  the  Catholic  Apology  was  equal  to 
the  need   

1.  The  movement  did  a  true  apologetic  work. 

2.  Defects  of  the  apologetic. 

3.  The  apologetic  that  might  have  been. 

4.  The  failure  of  the  apologetic. 

Ill 

CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     .       .  94-140 

§  1.  The  Catholic  Revival  as  the  Counter-Revo- 
lution   96- 1 1 1 

1.  The  literary,  political,  and  religious  aspects. 

2.  The  new  Catholic  apologetic. 

i.  Theoretical  :  authority  the  basis  of  religion. 
ii.  Historical :  the  Church  as  the  maker  of  civili- 
zation. 

3.  Irrelevance  of  the  apologetic. 

§  2.  The  English  Counterpart  of  the  Continental 

Revival  1 11- 116 

1.  Its  basis  also  the  authority  of  the  Church.  l»" 

2.  Its  peculiarity  its  personal  nature. 

§  3.  Philosophical  Scepticism  as  the  Apology  for 

Ecclesiastical  Authority   ....    1 16-130 

1.  Cardinal  Newman  the  representative  Catholic  apolo- 

£ist* 

2.  Theism  identified  with  Catholicism,  and  based  on 

conscience. 

3.  Distrust  of  the  reason. 

4.  The  nature  of  man  divided  against  itself. 

§  4.  Whether  the  Scepticism  or  the  Authority  be 

valid  130-140 

1.  The  exercise  of  intellect  beneficial  to  religion. 

2.  Submission  to  authority  the  victory  of  unbelief,  V 

3.  Distrust  of  reason  an  arraignment  of  God.  w 


CONTENTS 


IV 

PAGES 

CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  .       .  141-204 

§  1.  Tub  Ideas  of  God,  Religion,  and  the  Church  .  143-150 

1.  Two  constantly  opposed  conceptions  of  Gotl. 

2.  Newman's  doctrine  of  religion  false  to  history. 

3.  Man's  relation  to  God  ever  less  direct. 

§  2.  The  Roman  as  the  Catholic  Church  .      .      .  151-156 

1.  The  appeal  of  the  Roman  Church  to  the  imagination. 

2.  Has  she  a  right  to  make  it  ? 

§  3.  Whether  it  be  possible  to  conceive  Catholicism 
as  a  development  from  the  Religion  of 
Christ  157-167 

1.  Scepticism  the  basis  of  a  mechanical  supernaturalism. 

2.  True  and  false  ideas  of  development. 

3.  The  historical  method  must  begin  by  finding  the 

primary  form. 

§  4.   HOW  THE  PRIESTHOOD  CAME  INTO  THE  RELIGION    .  I67-I75 

1.  The  religion  of  the  New  Testament  non-sacerdotal. 

2.  The  introduction  of  the  priestly  idea  due  to  the  in- 

fluence of  the  older  religions  and  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. 

§  5.  How  the  Church  became  a  Monarchy       .      ,  175-1S4 

1.  No  infallible  supremacy  known  to  the  New  Testa- 

ment. 

2.  The  Roman  empire  organized  the  Church. 

3.  Imperial  supremacy  became  papal  infallibility. 

§  6.  The  Ideas  which  organized  the  System     ,      .  1S4-190 

1.  The  unifying  ideal  came  from  Neo-Platonism. 

2.  Affinities  between  Plato's  Republic  and  the  Roman 

Church. 

§  7.  Catholicism  in  History  190-19S 

1.  The  historical  achievement  of  the  Roman  Church. 

2.  Its  disservice  to  the  Christian  religion. 

3.  The  significance  of  modern  history. 

§  8.  Catholicism  no  sufficient  organ  for  the  Chris- 
tian Religion  198-204 

1.  The  supernaturalism  of  Catholicism  marvellous,  not 

mysterious. 

2.  Its  radical  defect  the  want  of  a  true  supernaturalism. 


REASON  AND  RELIGION  205-236 

§  1.  The  Philosophical  Scepticism  of  Cardinal  New- 
man .   206-214 

1.  The  reason  a  ratiocinative  instrument. 

2.  It  is  therefore  unable  to  construe  religious  truth. 


CONTENTS 


PAGES 

§  2.  Correlation  ok  the  Subjective  and  Objective 

Scepticism  214-222 

1.  The  reason  cannot  find  God  in  nature. 

2.  What  are  the  axioms  of  religion  ? 

§  3.  The  Dialectical  Movement  towards  Certainty  222-226 

1.  Incompetence  of  reason. 

2.  Reason  and  religion  remain  apart. 

§  4.  Reason  and  Authority  in  Religion     .      .      .  226-236 

1.  Significance  of  Cardinal  Newman. 

2.  Authority  of  the  Church,  and  of  Christ  and  the 

Bible,  contrasted. 

VI 

CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  THE    CATHOLIC  RE- 
VIVAL   237-280 

§  1.  The  Biography  237-243 

1.  Its  nature. 

2.  Its  worth. 

§  2.  The  Character  of  the  Man  243-253 

1.  A  political  craftsman  in  the  arena  of  faith  and  reason. 

2.  The  diplomacy  of  his  conversion. 

3.  The  opinions  of  those  who  knew  him. 

§  3.  His  Conversion,  its  Process  and  Reasons   .       .  253-260 

1.  Its  reasons  :  their  origin  and  significance  for  him. 

2.  The  logical  process  of  his  conversion  and  its  limita- 

tions. 

§  4.  His  Policy  within  the  Roman  Church      .      .  260-265 

1.  The  contrast  between  the  Roman  society  and  its 

Tractarian  converts. 

2.  Manning's  policy  and  aims. 

§  5.  Manning  as  Roman  Churchman  under  Tius  IX.  265-275 

1.  His  ideal  the  sovereignty  of  the  Pope  in  English 

Catholicism. 

2.  Newman's  Oxford  scheme. 

3.  The  Vatican  Council. 

§  6.  Manning  under  Leo  XIII.  more  English,  less 

Roman  276-280 

1.  Manning's  later  days. 

2.  The  lessons  of  the  Catholic  Revival. 

VII 

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM  :  THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  .  281-348 
§  1.  The  Outer  Factors  of  the  Revival    .      .      .  284-296 

1.  The  separation  in  idea  of  the  civil  and  the  eccle- 

siastical. 

2.  The  High  Church  party  and  the  Evangelicals. 

3.  Romanticism. 


CONTENTS 


Xi 


PAGES 

§  2.  The  Makers  of  the  Revival  296-307 

1.  Keble. 

2.  Newman. 

3.  Pusey 

§  3.  The  Anglo-Catholic  Theory  307-312 

1.  The  authority  of  the  Church. 

2.  The  lack  of  historical  spirit. 

§4.  The  Anglo-Catholics  and  Literature.      .      .  312-31S 

1.  Its  lack  of  representation  in  poetry. 

2.  Its    small    achievement  (Newman   excepted)  in 

religious  thought. 

§  5.  The  Anglican  and  the  Broad  Church       .      .  318-323 

1.  The  Broad  Church  ideal  of  a  National  Church. 

2.  The  way  in  which  the  Broad  Church  helped  the 

Anglo-Catholic  movement. 

§  6.  The  Theological  Idea  in  the  Anglican  Mind  .  324-330 

1.  The  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  made  central. 

2.  The  influence  of  the  new  idea. 

§  7.  The  Theological  Idea  in  the  Church  .      .      .  330-335 

1.  The  Church  conceived  as  "  naturally  of  a  piece  with 

the  Incarnation." 

2.  The  change  in  the  idea  of  authority. 

§  8.  The  Church  and  the  Age   335-348 

1.  The  Age  is  a  trying  one  for  the  Anglo-Catholic 

theory. 

2.  Sacerdotalism  is  less  than  Christianity. 

VIII 

"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  ....  349-388 

§  1.  The  Statesman  as  Divine   351-359 

1.  Historic  instances. 

2.  Mr.  Balfour's  purpose. 

§2.  The  Critical  Philosopher  as  Positive  Theologian  359-371 

1.  The  defects  of  the  criticism  of  Transcendentalism. 

2.  The  criticism  of  "  Naturalism." 

3.  Mr.  Balfour's  attitude  not,  like  Hume's,  philosophic 

doubt,  but  doubt  of  philosophy. 

4.  Philosophic  Scepticism  no  help  to  Faith. 

§3.  The  Philosophy  of  Theology       ....  371-384 

1.  The  problem  of  Religion  :  Mr.  Balfour's  method. 

2.  What  Mr.  Balfour  means  by  authority. 

3.  Criticism  of  Mr.  Balfour's  theory. 

i.  Reason  must  be  distinguished  from  reasoning. 

ii.  Is  authority  non-rational? 

iii.  Reason  is  ever  modifying  belief. 

iv.  Can  psychological  climate  justify  belief  ? 

§  4.  The  Theology  of  the  Philosopher     .      .      .  384-388 


Nil 


CONTENTS 


IX 

I'AGES 

SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS        .       .  389-436 

§  1.  The  Cambridge  Scholars  and  Divines.      .      .  393-406 

1.  Lightfoot,  Westcott,  and  Hort  contrasted. 

2.  'What  made  them  a  School. 

§  2.  The  Oxford  Scholars  and  Divines     .      .      .  406-429 

i.  Benjamin  Jowett  .......  406-412 

ii.  Edwin  Hatch   413-429 

1.  The  Bampton  Lectures. 

2.  The  Hibbert  Lectures. 

3.  Hatch  and  his  Critics 


§  3.  Comparison  as  regards  Mind  and  Methods  of 

Hort  and  Hatch  429-436 

1.  Hort  preferred  silence  to  possible  error  ;  Hatch  the 

contrary. 

2.  Hort  read  Christianity  as  the  interpretation  of  the 

universe. 

3.  Hatch  confined  himself  to  pure  historical  inquiry. 

X 

OXFORD  AND  JOWETT  

§  1.  Oxford  University  and  Colleges. 

1.  The  end  of  the  college  is  the  culture  of  men  :  of 

the  university,  the  cultivation  of  learning. 

2.  Oxford  in  the  eighteenth  century  :  the  supremacy 

of  the  colleges  fatal  to  both  scholarship  and 
culture. 

§  2.  Oxford  and  its  Sons  in  Two  Centuries     .      .  446-458 

1.  The  change  that  came  with  the  nineteenth  century. 

2.  The  Oxford  movement. 

3.  Broad  Churchmen  and  men  of  Literature. 

§  3.  Jowett  as  Reformer  in  University  and  College  455-460 

1.  His  despair  of  the  University. 

2.  His  success  in  the  College. 

§  4.  Jowett  as  Scholar  and  Thinker  ....  460-468 

1.  His  lack  of  interest  in  scholarship  and  dislike  of 

metaphysics. 

2.  How  this  separated  him  from  Maurice,  but  attracted 

him  to  Flato. 

3.  Comparison  of  Jowett  and  Mark  Pattison. 

§  5.  Jowett  as  Theologian  and  Churchman     .      .  468-4S1 

1.  His  religious  reserve. 

2.  His  attitude  to  subscription. 

3.  His  idealism  in  religion. 

4.  Jowett  contrasted  with  Dean  Stanley, 

5.  His  persistence  and  its  success. 


437-4S1 
439-446 


INTRODUCTION 


HE  Studies  collected  in  this  volume  may  fairly 


JL  claim  to  be  neither  sporadic  nor  occasional 
essays,  but  chapters  of  a  coherent  and  progressive 
work.  While  written  at  different  times,  they  are 
yet  products  of  continuous  reading  and  reflexion  on 
the  problems  they  discuss.  They  have  all  been  care- 
fully revised,  here  abridged,  there  enlarged,  but  they 
have  not  been  recast,  nor  have  the  notes  of  time  and 
circumstance  been  erased. 

The  natural  history  of  a  book  may  have  no  great 
significance  for  any  one  except  the  man  whose 
history  it  is.  But  there  are  cases  where,  apart  from 
it,  the  true  inwardness  of  the  book  may  be  hidden 
from  the  reader.  Now  what  drew  the  author  to  the 
field  which  he  seeks  here  in  part  to  explore  was  a 
double  interest — a  religious  and  a  philosophical,  the 
one  being  the  direct  outcome  of  the  other.  On  the 
religious  side  he  was  attracted  by  the  men  who  had 
been  the  makers  and  leaders  of  the  Catholic  Revival, 
by  what  appeared  their  spirit  of  devotion,  their  sin- 
cerity, their  simplicity  of  purpose  and  honesty  of 
belief  in  an  age  of  intellectual  complexity,  unrest, 
and  change.     They  were  picturesque  figures,  had 


XIU 


xiv 


INTRODUCTION 


stood  out  from  the   prosaic  commonplace  of  the 
modern  day  ;  they  had  loved  the  sound  of  the  battle, 
had  known  how  to  handle  their  weapons,  and  how  to 
smite  and  slay  and  not  spare.    They  appealed  to  his 
imagination,  lived  amid  something  of  the  glamour 
which  magnifies  and  adorns,  and  they  illustrated  the 
heroism  that  can  at  once  contend  for  victory  and 
live  unvanquished  amid  and  after  defeat.    He  feels 
as  if  reverence  for  the  men  who  have  striven  and 
suffered  for  the  faith  ran  in  his  blood.    The  heroes  of 
his  boyish  dreams  were  saints,  and  the  saints  heroes 
who  had,  by  being  faithful  unto  death,  consecrated 
the  hills  and  moorlands  he  loves.    And  the  Church- 
men he  had  been  taught  to  honour  were  not  those 
who  walked  in  prosperous  places  and  lived  in  com- 
fort with  well-trained  and  conformable  consciences ; 
but  those  who  had  been  too  rigorous  and  veracious 
of  soul  to  profess  a  belief  they  did  not  hold.  And 
when  in  comparative  youth  he  came  upon  Newman's 
Apologia,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  come  upon  a  man 
of  the  ancient  heroic  strain.     He  was  blind  to  the 
transcendent  art  of  the  book,  to  its  apologetic  pur- 
pose, to  the  imagination  which  had   idealized  its 
author  even  to  himself ;  he  only  felt  the  passionate 
conviction  of  the  man,  his  obedience  to  the  inexor- 
able logic  which  through  the  intellect  ruled  his  will. 
Hence  came  the  desire  to  know  more  intimately  this 
marvellous  personality  and  the  men  who  surrounded 
him,  who  influenced  him, whom  he  influenced,  the  ideas 
and  aims  they  had  in  common,  the  cause  for  which 


XV 


they  suffered,  and  the  ends  for  which  they  strove. 
But  with  the  increase  of  knowledge  came  a  discovery 
that  qualified  the  religious  sympathy.  Why  did  their 
spirit  express  itself  in  the  way  it  did,  assume  a  form 
and  follow  methods  which  were  not  only  a  protest 
against  all  that  the  author's  heroes,  saints,  and  martyrs 
had  suffered  for,  but  a  denial  of  their  heroism  and 
saintliness,  and  a  reduction  of  themselves  to  vulgar 
schismatics  and  of  their  beliefs  to  profane  heresies  ? 
The  more  the  men  were  approached  from  this  side, 
the  more  the  picturesque  colour  faded  from  their 
faces  ;  and  the  more  they  appeared  as  victims  of 
sectarian  spites,  ill-informed,  prejudiced,  and  violent, 
darkened  by  qualities  which  neither  literary  genius, 
nor  spiritual  passion,  nor  religious  emotion  and  aims 
could  dispossess  of  their  intrinsic  meanness. 

The  consequence  was  the  formulation  of  a  most 
interesting  problem,  though,  unhappily,  a  problem  of 
an  order  too  common  in  religious  history  : — How  was 
it  that  intellectual  or  even  ecclesiastical  differences 
could  so  pervert  the  judgment  as  to  make  men  unjust 
to  a  piety  so  pure  and  noble  as  to  be  a  reproof  to 
their  own  ?  Did  not  this  signify  a  moral  defect,  a 
blindness  which  could  not  but  dim  the  clearness  or 
lessen  the  sureness  of  their  spiritual  vision  ?  And  this 
vexing  question  became  still  more  distressing  when 
it  appeared  that  their  own  minds  were  not  so  simple 
or  so  lucid  and  constant  as  had  seemed.  Some  of 
the  "  Tracts,"  and  books  like  Froude's  Reniabis,  had 
much  in  them  to  shock  old-fashioned  prejudices  :  and, 


xvi 


INTRODUCTION 


of  course,  there  are  occasions  when  such  prejudices 
ought  to  be  shocked.  But  here  was  a  moral  per- 
versity which  would  not  be  just  to  good  causes  and 
better  men.  And  in  those  early  years,  before  the 
imagination  had  idealized  the  Oxford  men  and  move- 
ment, when  the  work  was  rough  and  the  weapons 
were  even  as  the  work,  the  persons  who  were  thus 
unjust  showed  themselves  greatly  in  need  of  the 
charity  which  thinks  no  evil,  judges  gently,  and 
hopes  much.  The  man  who  looks  back  at  them 
through  the  serener  atmosphere  of  to-day  wonders 
that  they  suffered  so  much  ;  the  man  who  comes 
to  them  through  the  literature  of  the  times  may 
well  wonder  that  they  suffered  so  little  and  prevailed 
so  completely.  For  they  not  only  wrote  with  cal- 
culated vehemence,  but  they  boldly  practised  "  eco- 
nomies," held  back  what  they  ought  to  have  stated, 
revealed  their  minds  and  purpose  as  those  they 
wished  to  lead  were  able  to  bear  it  ;  counselled 
"  reserve "  and  other  things  which  men  they  inso- 
lently assailed  or  despised  would  have  scorned  to 
do.  It  was  a  point  which  touched  the  writer  closely  ; 
it  moved  him  then  and  moves  him  now.  Men 
whose  saintliness  was  to  him  a  matter  of  experience, 
of  whom  he  could  not  think  without,  so  to  speak, 
uncovering  his  soul  as  if  in  the  presence  of  the 
most  Holy,  were  too  near  God  and  too  like  God 
to  be  fit  subjects  of  opprobrium  by  persons  who 
seemed  so  possessed  of  our  commoner  mortal  frailties. 
The  religious  interest  thus  passed  naturally  over 


INTRODUCTION 


xvii 


into  the  philosophical.  Why  should  a  mind  open  to 
truth  be  insensible  to  justice  ?  Why  should  those 
zealous  for  religion  judge  so  falsely  those  who  were 
as  religious  as  themselves,  and  who  may  have  suf- 
fered infinitely  more  for  conscience'  sake  ?  The 
question  was  more  than  a  problem  in  casuistry  ;  it 
involved  principles  that  carried  one  down  to  the 
very  roots  of  things — the  attitude  of  the  mind  to 
religion  as  a  whole,  to  God  as  truth  and  as  right- 
eousness. But  though  this  determined  the  philo- 
sophical problem  in  its  earliest  form,  it  did  not  by 
any  means  fix  its  latest.  On  the  contrary,  it  has 
never  ceased  to  keep  enlarging  and  growing  in  com- 
plexity. We  are  face  to  face  with  all  the  forces 
which  make  for  differentiation  in  religion,  tendencies 
which,  by  throwing  the  emphasis  now  on  its  intel- 
lectual and  now  on  its  ethical  side,  here  on  its  social 
and  political,  there  on  its  historical  and  traditional 
elements,  create  new  parties  and  new  sects.  And 
we  have  seen  in  our  own  lifetime  these  tendencies 
produce  their  ancient  and  invariable  results ;  and 
these  Studies  may  be  taken  as  a  contribution  to  the 
discussion  of  this  subject  by  the  help  of  material 
which  contemporary  men  and  movements  have  sup- 
plied. The  author  is  not  so  vain  as  to  think  that 
his  contribution  is  more  than  a  very  partial  handling 
of  the  questions  he  would  fain  have  discussed  ;  but 
he  can  say  with  perfect  truth  that  he  has  honestly 
laboured  to  understand  the  men,  and  to  render  such 
an  account  of  them,  the  tendencies  amid  which  they 


xviii 


INTRODUCTION 


lived,  and  the  movement  they  helped  to  create  and 
to  guide,  as  need  shame  neither  truth  nor  charity. 
He  may  also  plead  that  while  these  Studies  have 
everywhere  had  a  very  positive  end  in  view,  they 
have  not  been  written  with  a  controversial  purpose. 
He  has  not  attempted,  indeed,  to  write  with  colour- 
less neutrality,  for  it  has  not  been  granted  to  him 
on  such  questions  to  feel  neutral  or  to  be  colour- 
less. But  it  is  a  mistake  to  imagine  that  a  man  with- 
out convictions  can  comprehend  convinced  men  :  the 
men  who  are  best  radically  disqualified  for  criticism 
being  only  of  two  sorts,  (a)  those  who  think  there  is 
no  truth  worth  believing  or  contending  for ;  and  (/9) 
those  who  so  hold  their  own  beliefs  as  to  see  no  reason 
and  recognize  no  truth  in  the  beliefs  of  other  men. 
From  these  disqualifications  the  writer  would  like, 
were  he  at  all  able,  to  keep  himself  tolerably  free. 

In  preparing  these  Studies  for  the  press  the  author 
has  had  frequent  occasion  to  review  his  own  earlier 
judgments.  This  is  a  process  which  it  is  good  for 
a  man  to  have  now  and  then  to  undergo,  especially 
as  it  is  the  most  excellent,  because  the  most  effec- 
tive, of  all  methods  for  teaching  him  humility.  But 
in  the  present  instance  he  feels  that  as  regards  his 
graver  judgments  on  men,  tendencies,  and  prin- 
ciples, which  he  can  truthfully  say  were  slowly, 
laboriously,  and  painfully  reached,  he  has  little  to 
modify  and  nothing  to  cancel  or  recall.  In  parti- 
cular he  would  specify — 
(a)  The  conclusions  reached  on  the  part  intel- 


INTRODUCTION 


lectual  scepticism  played  in  the  development  of 
Newman's  mind  and  faith.  There  has  been  in  our 
century  no  character  more  difficult  of  analysis,  no 
intellect  at  once  loftier  and  narrower,  no  greater 
adept  at  reasoning  or  thinker  more  arbitrary  in 
selecting  and  defining  the  premisses  from  which  he 
reasoned  ;  no  one  who  was  more  transcendently  and 
transparently  sincere  or  so  acutely  sophistical,  or 
who  had  in  such  a  degree  the  faculty  for  both  logical 
and  moral  analysis  and  the  incapacity  or  distaste 
for  the  higher  speculation.  His  passion  for  certitude 
was  equalled  only  by  his  inability  to  find  it  in  any 
way  save  by  the  sacrifice  of  his  intellectual  pride ;  and 
there  was  nothing  in  which  he  gloried  more  than 
the  invincible  logic  which  drove  him  to  what  was 
at  once  the  surrender  and  the  realization  of  self. 

(/S)  The  analysis  of  the  course  and  tendency  of 
the  Catholic  movement,  especially  in  its  effects  on 
the  mind  and  status  of  the  Anglican  clergy.  It  has 
been  nothing  short  of  a  calamity  to  the  English 
Church  that  her  claims  to  be  Catholic  have  been  made 
to  turn  so  much  on  the  question  of  orders  :  for  it  has 
disturbed  the  whole  balance  of  the  Anglican  system, 
and  changed  the  ministry  from  being  its  means  of 
service  into  being  its  pillar  and  ground  of  truth.  The 
immense  emphasis  which  has  been  laid  upon  the 
apostolic  descent  of  the  priesthood,  has  created  a 
body  which  can  only  live  by  every  priest  feeling  as 
if  he  were  himself  invested  with  apostolic  authority. 
They  have  pleaded  that  they  were  a  Catholic  Church 


XX 


INTRODUCTION 


because  they  had  an  apostolic  ministry  ;  but  it  was 
easier  to  argue  that  their  ministry  was  apostolic 
than  to  organize  Catholic  unity  and  order.  The 
Anglican  Church  is  here  almost  the  exact  opposite 
of  the  Roman.  There  is  no  one  the  Church  of 
Rome  more  profoundly  distrusts  than  the  indepen- 
dent priest,  no  one  whose  existence  it  has  contrived 
to  make  so  impossible  within  its  ample  but  clearly 
drawn  borders.  From  the  humblest  parish  priest 
right  up  through  bishop  and  archbishop  to  the  Pope 
himself,  the  dependence  of  the  lower  on  the  higher 
office  is  consistent  and  complete.  Rome  is  specially 
careful  of  the  priest  in  the  act  and  article  of  abso- 
lution ;  it  fears  the  confessional  even  while  it  lives 
to  a  large  extent  by  the  powers  it  gives.  And  so 
it  has  jealously  surrounded  the  penitent  with  a 
means  of  protection  against  the  confessor,  and  it 
has  with  equal  jealousy  imposed  upon  the  confessor 
limitations  he  may  not  overstep,  and  responsibilities 
he  must  not  forget.  But  the  Anglican  priest  is  free 
from  the  canonical  laws  which  bind  the  Roman,  and 
he  can  work  his  inexperienced  will,  and  often  does 
work  it,  not  simply  within  the  parish  or  congrega- 
tion, but  even  within  the  more  sacred  sanctuary 
formed  by  the  souls  of  its  most  pious  members. 
For  the  Anglican  episcopate,  even  more  than  the 
priesthood,  is  not  as  the  Roman.  It  is  in  a  cardinal 
degree  civil  both  as  to  its  origin  and  as  to  the  terms 
on  which  it  exercises  jurisdiction  and  discipline. 
The  Bishop  has  to  think  not  simply  of  administering 


INTRODUCTION 


xxi 


a  canon  law,  but  much  more  of  those  secular  courts, 
juridical  in  mind,  legal  in  spirit  and  in  method, 
civil  in  sanction  and  in  source,  that  may  be  called 
upon  to  review,  modify,  or  even  disallow  his  judg- 
ment. And  as  he  knows  he  can  never  act  as  if  he 
were  a  purely  ecclesiastical  authority,  he  has  become 
a  master  in  the  art  of  inaction,  which  tempts  the 
more  convinced  or  daring  of  his  clergy  to  become 
masters  in  the  art  of  doing  as  they  list.  The  re- 
sult is  an  episcopate  burdened  with  administrative 
functions,  but  almost  void  of  authority,  judicial  and 
disciplinary.  And  as  if  out  of  sheer  love  of  an 
ironical  situation,  those  of  the  clergy  who  have 
most  pleaded  for  an  apostolical  episcopate  as  the 
condition  of  Catholic  unity,  defer  least  to  the  epis- 
copal voice.  Thus  after  the  Primate  had  spoken 
out  with  remarkable  courage  on  the  questions  most 
keenly  debated  in  the  Anglican  Church,  an  Anglo- 
Catholic  priest,  typical  in  his  devotion,  in  his  piety, 
in  his  self-denial  and  self-assertion,  wrote  to  the 
public  prints  to  say  that  it  was  of  vital  importance 
to  realize  that  these  primatial  charges  were  "  merely 
the  words  of  a  single  Anglican,  however  learned, 
however  exalted,  however  revered,  and  cannot  in 
any  sense  bind  the  conscience  of  any  other  Angli- 
can." And  he  adds,  "  One  can  hardly  imagine  what 
the  Church  of  England  would  have  been  to-day,  if 
at  any  other  period  of  her  existence  the  ipse  dixit 
of  the  Primate,  or  indeed  of  the  whole  Episcopate," 
had  been  regarded  as  more  than  "  the  mind  of  in- 


xxii 


INTRODUCTION 


dividual  prelates."  It  would  be  hard  to  discover 
a  more  extreme  form  of  Protestantism.  It  is  indi- 
vidualism so  pronounced  as  to  be  a  personal  rather 
than  congregational  independency.  For  this  inde- 
pendence of  the  bishop  finds  its  parallel  in  the  in- 
dependence of  the  parish ;  the  writers  who  have 
most  exhaustively  proved  the  ministry  apostolic  are 
least  able  to  discover  who  or  what  the  laity  are, 
whether  they  are  only  "  communicants,"  or  "  all 
baptized  and  confirmed  persons."  And  so  the  one 
clear  and  certain  divine  order  in  the  Church  is  the 
priesthood  ;  and  they,  emancipated  from  the  rule  of 
the  bishops  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  control  of 
the  laity  on  the  other,  are  free  to  follow  the  authority 
which  belongs  to  their  descent.  And  this  is  the 
high  Catholicism  which  the  Anglican  has  realized. 

(7)  Since  the  criticism  of  Mr.  Balfour's  Founda- 
tions of  Belief  was  written,  Professor  Seth  Pringle- 
Patteson  has  published  his  genial  and  kindly 
interpretation  of  that  ingenious  book.  He  has  said 
the  most  and  best  that  can  be  said  in  its  defence. 
But  he  will  not  misunderstand  me  if  I  claim  the 
right  of  a  criticized  critic  to  say  that  his  essay  seems 
to  me  an  excellent  example  of  hiucinerklarung, 
and  saves  Mr.  Balfour's  argument  by  sacrificing 
much  of  his  competence  as  a  philosophical  writer. 
And  this  appears  a  rather  harder  measure  than  ought 
to  be  dealt  out  to  so  very  capable  a  student  in  the 
field  of  philosophy. 

The  scope  of  the  book  is  not  so  large  as  the  title 


INTRODUCTION 


xxiii 


may  seem  to  suggest.  Catholicism,  even  as  qualified 
by  Roman,  does  not  here  denote  the  Church  of 
Rome.  Its  system  is  not  here  in  dispute.  Were  it 
so,  the  work  would  have  been  quite  other  than  it  is, 
both  as  regards  matter  and  form.  What  is  meant 
is  the  Catholicism  which  grew  out  of  the  Anglican 
Revival — the  movement,  with  its  Roman  affinities 
and  ideals,  which  began  in  Oxford,  and  has  so  pro- 
foundly modified  the  religious  temper  and  practices 
of  the  English  Church  and  people. 

It  only  remains  to  add  a  single  word  of  gratitude 
to  the  editor  of  the  Contemporary  Review,  where 
these  chapters  originally  appeared,  for  his  kind  con- 
sent to  their  republication. 


r 


I 

THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF 
RELIGION 

§  I.  The  Distinction  between  Religion  and  Church 

i.  A  I  AHE  people  of  England  seem  to  be  at  last 
X  awakening  to  the  truth  that  to  have  a 
church  or  churches  is  not  the  same  thing  as  to  have 
a  religion.  Churches  are,  that  religion  may  be 
realized  :  but  it  does  not  follow  that  to  multiply  or 
enlarge  churches  is  to  realize  religion.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  possible  by  having  too  much  church 
to  have  too  little  religion  ;  the  most  perfectly  or- 
ganized and  administered  ecclesiasticism  may  but 
effectually  imprison  the  living  Spirit  of  God.  The 
churches  are  the  means,  but  religion  is  the  end ; 
and  if  they,  instead  of  being  well  content  to  be  and 
to  be  held  means,  good  in  the  degree  of  their  fitness 
and  efficiency,  regard  and  give  themselves  out  as 
ends,  then  they  become  simply  the  most  irreligious 
of  institutions,  mischievous  exactly  in  proportion 
to  their  strength.  Religion  is  too  rich  and  varied  a 
thing  to  be  capable  of  incorporation  in  any  one  church, 
or  even  in  all  the  churches  ;  and  the  church  that 
claims  to  be  able  to  embody  it,  whether  for  a  people 

\ 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


or  for  humanity,  simply  shows  the  poverty  and 
impotence  of  its  own  religious  ideal.  It  is  a  small 
thing,  nay  more  an  easy  thing,  for  a  church  to  make 
out  its  historical  continuity  and  catholicity — that  is 
only  a  matter  of  deft  criticism  and  courageous  argu- 
ment ;  but  it  is  a  great  thing  for  any  church  to  have 
created  or  to  be  creating  a  society  correspondent 
to  the  ideal  of  Christ. 

Now,  the  truth  that  seems  to  be  breaking  upon 
the  English  people  is  this — that  they  have  still  to 
set  about  the  realization  of  this  ideal,  and  that  to 
accomplish  it  they  must  take  some  higher  and  nobler 
way  than  the  ancient  method  of  founding  and  main- 
taining churches.  What  makes  us  feel  so  distant 
from  the  religion  of  Christ,  is  not  the  amount  of 
belligerent  and  most  audible  unbelief,  both  of  the 
critical  and  uncritical  order  ;  nor  the  relatively,  and 
to  many  good  people  dishearteningly,  small  number 
of  church-goers  ;  nor  the  failure  of  missionary  zeal 
to  keep  pace  with  the  increase  of  the  population  and 
its  aggregation  in  large  towns  ;  nor  the  number  and 
quality  of  the  bodies  that  describe  themselves  as 
churches,  but  other  no  less  honourable  bodies  as 
sects  ;  nor  the  decline  in  the  churches  of  the  love 
that  seeks  to  emulate,  and  the  growth  of  the  envy 
that  loves  to  disparage  ;  but  something  more  radical 
than  any  one  of  these,  or  even  than  all  of  them — the 
small  degree  in  which  the  Christian  ideal  has  been 
and  is  the  constitutive  and  regulative  idea  of  the 
State  and  society  in  England.    We  have  suddenly 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  3 


become  conscious  that  our  legislation  and  civiliza- 
tion have  been  too  little  penetrated  by  the  spirit  of 
Christ,  while  so  pervaded  and  dominated  by  the 
spirit  of  selfishness,  that  they  have  been  making  hea- 
thens faster  and  more  effectually  than  the  churches 
have  been  able  to  make  Christians.  The  people  feel 
that  the  Church,  satisfied  with  what  the  State  has 
done  for  ?'/,  has  failed  to  stand  by  them  in  their  dumb 
quest  after  a  fuller  justice  and  a  fairer  freedom ;  and 
that  they  but  do  as  they  have  been  done  by,  when 
they  forsake  the  society  which  forsook  them  in  their 
sorest  need.  It  is  easy  to  be  indiscriminate,  to 
speak  without  measure  as  to  the  rights  of  property 
being  the  wrongs  of  man  ;  but  evidences,  too  many 
to  be  enumerated,  prove  that  property  and  privilege 
have  been  so  conceived  and  guarded  as  to  help  in 
the  production  of  certain  great  social  disasters  and 
dangers.  The  idea  that  the  men  who  could  best 
assert  their  rights  had  the  most  rights  to  assert,  has 
been  too  potent  a  factor  in  the  creation  of  our  social 
order,  and  may  yet  beget  a  reaction  of  the  sort  men 
call  revolution.  The  converse,  indeed,  were  more  of 
a  Christian  principle — those  least  able  to  assert  their 
rights  have,  if  not  most  rights  to  be  asserted,  most 
need  for  their  assertion  ;  for  the  things  they  claim  in 
weakness  are  the  duties  of  those  in  power.  And  as 
the  religion  which  Christ  revealed  and  embodied  is 
most  jealous  about  the  performance  of  these  duties, 
the  church  that  neglects  their  enforcement  abdicates 
its  truest  social  function.    And  it  is  because  there  has 


4 


CATHOLICISM 


been  such  neglect  in  England  that  we  are  face  to  face 
with  so  many  grave  problems — political,  social,  re- 
ligious. We  have  in  our  midst  outcast  masses, 
multitudes  who  have  lapsed  into  something  worse 
than  heathenism,  into  merest  savagery ;  and  have 
done  so,  not  through  lack  of  religious  agencies,  but 
simply  through  lack  of  religion,  the  absence  or  in- 
action of  the  higher  Christian  ideals  in  the  mind, 
heart,  and  conscience  of  the  body  politic.  The  worst 
depravity,  because  the  least  open  to  reproof  or 
change,  is  not  the  depravity  of  the  individual,  but  of 
the  class  or  State  ;  and  the  churches,  while  doing 
zealous  battle  against  the  less,  have  too  much  for- 
gotten the  greater.  And  now  it  is  seen  that  neglect 
brings  the  inevitable  retribution.  Our  outcast  are  our 
lapsed  classes ;  and  it  is  easier  to  teach  religion  to  the 
heathen  than  to  restore  the  lapsed.  There  is  less 
hope  of  a  debased  civilization  than  of  the  rudest  and 
frankest  naturalism. 

The  judgment  expressed  in  these  sentences  may 
be  thought  too  sweeping  ;  yet,  however  much  he  may 
be  inclined  to  qualify  it,  no  thoughtful  Christian  man 
can  regard  the  religious  condition  of  the  English 
people  with  a  light  or  satisfied  heart.  Of  course,  a 
determined  optimism  can  find  much  to  say  in  its  own 
behalf.  It  can  reckon  up  the  sums  spent  on  build- 
ing churches,  supplementing  stipends,  founding  and 
maintaining  religious  houses  and  institutions,  pro- 
secuting missionary  enterprises  at  home  and  abroad  ; 
and  may  victoriously  argue  that  these  sums  are  so 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  5 


immense  as  to  prove  the  spirit  of  faith  to  be  a  living 
and  zealous  spirit,  devoted  and  self-sacrificing.  It 
can  also  appeal  to  the  multitude  of  beneficent  agencies 
and  benevolent  institutions  worked  by  the  churches  ; 
and  may  veraciously  enough  affirm  that  without 
them  the  hand  of  charity  and  generous  helpfulness 
would  be  almost,  if  not  altogether,  paralyzed.    I  am 
far  from  wishing  either  to  question  these  facts  or  to 
den)'  the  inference  which  may  be  most  fairly  drawn 
from  them  ;  but  the  point  lies  here  :  Grant  the  facts 
and  the  inference  to  be  alike  true,  ought  they  to 
satisfy  the  Christian  conscience?  or  ought  not  that 
conscience — in  the  face  of  the  destitution,  depravity, 
utter  and  shameless  godlessness,  which  exist  in  spite 
of  all  the  expenditure  and  efforts  of  the  churches — 
to  be  filled  with  deep  dissatisfaction  ?    For  what  do 
these  evils  mean  ?    That  our  society  is  to  the  degree 
that  they  exist  not  only  imperfectly  Christian,  but 
really  un-Christian  ;  that,  so  far  as  they  were  pre- 
ventable, Church  and  State  have  alike  been  forgetful 
of  their  highest   obligations,  or   unequal  to  their 
performance.    To  cure  an  evil  is  a  less  excellent 
thing  than  to  prevent  it  ;  and  few  things  fill  the 
heart  with  deeper  pity  than  the  thought  that  there 
are  evils  which  ought  not  to  have  been,  and  would 
not  have  been,  if  the  Christian  religion  had  so  reigned 
as  to  be  sovereign  in  this  realm.    This  is  a  sad  and 
humiliating   reflection   to   men   who    believe  that 
Christianity  is  of  God,  instituted  by  Him  that  His 
will  might  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven. 


6 


CATHOLICISM 


Centuries  indeed  are  little  to  God  ;  but  they  are 
much  to  man.  The  thousand  years  that  are  but  a 
moment  in  the  presence  of  His  Eternal  Being,  are  a 
large  fraction  of  the  period  allotted  to  humanity. 
Loss  of  good  is  to  it  an  irretrievable  loss  ;  and  the 
happiness  of  ages  to  come  can  never  bless  hapless 
ages  that  have  passed  and  perished.  And  if  Chris- 
tianity has,  in  the  course  of  its  history,  not  done  all 
the  good  it  was  intended  to  do,  and  therefore  ought 
to  have  done,  then  the  result  has  been  an  absolute 
loss  to  man  ;  the  possible  best  has  not  been  reached 
by  him,  the  best  possible  has  not  been  done  by  it. 

2.  Now,  one  main  reason  why  our  religion  meets 
with  so  much  neglect  and  opposition  is  that  it  has 
not  prevented,  or  remedied  in  the  measure  man  had 
a  right  to  expect  of  it,  the  evils  from  which  he  suffers. 
Our  modern  Socialisms,  Nihilisms,  Secularisms,  and 
such-like,  have  not  lived  without  a  cause.  In  the 
polemical  method  and  by  the  polemical  spirit  they 
can  be  easily  dealt  with ;  in  the  supple  and  dexterous 
hands  of  an  apologetical  protagonist  they  can  be  made 
to  look  void  of  intellectual  strength,  full  of  political 
and  economical  immoralities.  But  it  is  a  small  thing 
to  expose  their  mental  or  moral  crudities — that  in  no 
way  ends  their  being  or  prevents  their  rise ;  it  is  a 
greater  thing  to  inquire,  Why  are  they? — what  are 
the  causes  and  conditions  of  their  existence  ? — for  to 
ask  this,  may  be  to  find  a  way  to  prevent  their 
formation  and  growth.  They  are  but  symptoms  of 
a  disease ;  cure  the  disease,  and  the  symptoms  will 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  J 


cease.    Now,  these  Nihilisms   and   Secularisms  of 
ours  have  been  born  of  the  sense  of  evils  religion 
ought  to  have  mitigated  or  remedied,  but  has  not. 
In  despair  of  help  from  their  natural  helper,  men 
have   taken   counsel   with   despair.     In   our  anti- 
religious  movements  there  is  a  dangerous  fanaticism, 
the  child  of  passion,  not  of  thought.    The  unbelief 
the  churches  have  to  fear  is  not  a  thing  of  the 
critical  or  rebellious  reason,  but  of  the  hate  begotten 
of  disappointed  hopes.    And  because  the  hopes  were 
legitimate,  the  disappointment  is  natural.    The  poor 
were  right  in  expecting  help  from  religion,  in  believ- 
ing that  its  mission  was  to  lift  them  out  of  their 
poverty,  to  make  an  end  of  the  charities  that  are  the 
luxuries  of  the  rich  and  the  miseries  of  the  poor,  and 
to  create  a  society  where  freedom,  justice,  and  plenty 
were  to  reign.    But  the  people  are  wrong  in  making 
their  revolt  against  religion,  rather  than  against  the 
causes  and   conditions   which   have  hindered  its 
realization.    What  they  need  is,  not  its  destruction, 
but  its  emancipation  ;  to  destroy  it  were  to  destroy 
the  only  foundation  on  which  a  society,  which  shall 
be  a  free  and  ordered  brotherhood,  can  be  built ;  to 
emancipate  it  were  to  set  all  its  ideal  principles  free 
for  creative  and  incorporative  action  in  society  and 
the  State.    An  order  that  is  not  moral  can  only  be 
one  based  on  force  and  maintained  by  despotism  ;  an 
order  that  is  moral  must  be  based  on  religion  and 
maintained  by  the  principles  that  create  and  work 
through  free  men. 


8 


CA  THOLICISM 


Here,  then,  there  is  raised  a  question  of  the  deepest 
interest :  How,  or  under  what  conditions,  can  religion 
be  made  most  active  and  authoritative  among  a 
people  ?  What  agencies  or  forms  do  its  ideals  need 
that  they  may  work  most  creatively  and  towards 
completest  embodiment  ?  This  is  a  question  not  con- 
cerned with  the  relations  of  Church  and  State,  but 
with  the  far  more  radical  and  determinative  relations 
of  Church  and  Religion.  There  are  no  controversies 
so  wearisome  and  infructuous  as  our  ecclesiastical, 
but  no  problems  of  so  vital  and  universal  interest 
as  our  religious ;  and  here  we  so  touch  the  heart 
of  the  matter  that  our  ecclesiastical  is  sublimed 
into  our  most  living  religious  question.  In  seeking 
the  reasons  why  the  State,  the  civilization,  and  the 
society  of  England  are  not  so  Christian  as  they 
ought  to  be,  we  cannot  escape  asking  whether 
blame  attaches  to  the  churches  ?  Proofs  of  historical 
continuity  and  catholicity  are  but  sad  playthings 
for  the  ingenious  intellect,  when  urged  in  behalf 
of  churches  confronted  by  such  invincible  evidences 
of  failure  as  are  the  miseries,  the  sins,  the  poverty 
and  want,  the  heathenisms  and  civilized  savageries 
of  to-day.  To  find  the  causes  of  this  failure  in 
the  wickedness  of  man,  were  to  make  it  stronger 
than  the  religion  ;  to  find  them  in  the  religion,  were 
to  charge  it  with  inherent  weakness.  But  to  seek 
these  causes  in  the  churches,  is  to  ask  whether  they 
have  fulfilled  their  mission,  and  whether  they  have 
understood  the  mission  they  were  meant  to  fulfil  : 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  9 


in  other  words,  whether  they  have  been  so  possessed 
with  the  ideal  of  religion  as  to  live  for  it  and  it  only, 
as  to  interpret  it  in  the  fittest  forms  and  speech, 
and  work  for  its  realization  in  the  best  possible 
ways.  In  these  questions  we  have  our  more  im- 
mediate problem  stated. 

§  II.  The  Relation  betzveen  Theology  and  Polity 

I.  Our  problem  raises  indeed  the  question  as  to 
the  polity  of  the  Church,  but  not  in  a  form  that 
requires  here  detailed  discussion.  We  postpone  to 
a  later  chapter  any  attempt  at  historical  criticism 
or  adjudication  between  the  claims  of  the  rival 
systems.  All  that  is  here  necessary,  is  to  determine 
the  relation  between  the  religious  ideal  and  the 
political  form,  which  is  the  vehicle  or  medium 
through  which  the  ideal  is  translated  into  reality. 
The  vital  questions  in  religion  relate  either  to  theo- 
logy or  polity  ;  and  these  form  so  real  and  living 
a  unity  that  the  latter  may  be  regarded  as  the 
organism  or  body  through  which  the  life  or  spirit 
of  the  former  is  expressed  and  realized  in  the  field 
of  personal  and  collective  history.  In  theology  the 
main  matter  is,  how  are  we  to  conceive  the  truth  ? 
But  in  polity,  how  can  we  best  translate  it  into 
concrete  and  living  forms?  In  theology  we  are 
concerned  with  the  ideal  contents  and  aims  of 
religion  ;  but  in  polity  with  the  means  and  methods 
for  their  realization.  If  the  place  and  relation  of 
ecclesiastical  polity  be  so  conceived,  then  its  funda- 


IO  CATHOLICISM 


mental  questions  will  touch  the  ideal  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  actual  on  the  other ;  will  bring  us 
face  to  face  on  the  one  side  with  the  idea  of  religion, 
and  on  the  other  with  the  forms  in  which  it  can 
best  be  embodied,  the  institutions  through  which 
it  can  be  most  completely  realized.  For  a  polity 
to  fail  to  understand  the  spirit  and  purpose  of 
religion,  is  to  fail  throughout  ;  to  succeed  anywhere, 
it  must  succeed  here.  To  express  a  true  theology  in 
a  living  polity  is,  as  it  were,  to  charge  a  system  with 
the  quickening  and  plastic  potencies  that  can  make 
man  live  after  the  mind  and  as  the  image  of  God. 

But  if  theology  and  polity  be  so  related,  then 
the  one  must  be  studied  and  interpreted  through 
the  other ;  because  it  is  necessary  that  they  in 
character  and  quality  correspond  throughout.  Out 
of  the  idea  of  the  religion  the  notion  of  the  polity 
ought  to  grow  ;  to  find  the  idea  is  to  determine  the 
notion.  This  point  of  view  will  enable  us  the  better 
either  to  appraise  or  comprehend  the  more  familiar 
methods  followed  in  discussions  on  this  field.  These 
methods,  which,  though  distinct,  do  not  necessarily 
exclude  each  other,  may  be  described  as  the  Biblical, 
the  Philosophical,  the  Political,  and  the  Historical  ; 
but  each  of  them  assumes  or  implies  some  under- 
lying and  determinative  conception  which  gives  to 
its  arguments  all  their  relevance  or  cogency.  This 
deeper  conception  indeed  determines  the  method  to 
be  used,  whether  one  or  more  is  to  be  followed,  and 
on  which  the  stress  is  to   lie.     Thus  the  Biblical 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  1 1 


method,  building  on  a  large  doctrine  as  to  the  Bible 
and  the  significance  of  the  institutions  it  describes, 
either  makes  the  Mosaic  state  the  ideal  which 
religious  men  ought  to  seek  resolutely  to  realize  in 
a  hagiocracy  or  hierocracy  ;  or  it  erects  the  apostolic 
churches  into  the  perfect  and  permanent  model 
which  all  future  Christian  societies  ought  to  copy 
and  reproduce.  By  this  method  the  polities  of  Rome 
and  Geneva,  of  the  Anglican  and  the  Independent 
communities,  have  alike  been  defended.  The  Philo- 
sophical method,  implying  an  exactly  antithetical 
Biblical  doctrine,  works  constructively  from  a  given 
principle  or  series  of  premisses,  say  the  idea  of  law 
or  order,  which  may  be  made  to  vindicate  a  papal, 
episcopal,  or  presbyterian  polity,  according  as  the 
thinker  conceives  the  monarchical,  the  aristocratical, 
or  the  republican  to  be  the  most  perfect  form  of 
government,  most  able  to  create  order,  to  exercise 
and  develop  the  noblest  life.  The  Political  method 
is  indifferent  or  even  hostile  to  all  arguments  that 
assume  an  absolute  standard  or  permanent  divine 
rule,  and  builds  on  expediency  and  prescriptive  right. 
It  was  the  characteristic  creation  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  which,  as  became  an  age  that  had  lost  all 
faith  in  the  Ideal,  cultivated  the  happy  optimism 
that  identified  the  actual  with  the  rational ;  and,  as 
a  consequence,  resisted  all  change  as  bad,  standing 
strong  in  the  conviction  that  there  was  no  proof  of 
right  like  the  fact  of  possession.  But  there  are  many 
lofty  and  proud  spirits  who  hate  expediency,  and 


12 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


believe  that  in  matters  of  religion  the  only  valid 
rights  are  divine  ;  and  to  them  the  historical  method 
has  offered  a  more  excellent  and  agreeable  way. 
They  have  formulated  to  themselves,  on  the  one 
side,  a  narrow  theory  of  history  ;  and,  on  the  other, 
as  the  mental  basis  of  all  their  work,  a  large  super- 
naturalism,  which  made  light  of  impossibilities  and 
turned  so  much  of  the  religious  society  as  was 
constituted  on  given  political  lines,  and  stood  in  a 
given  succession,  into  the  one  church  of  Christ.  And 
they  have  then,  by  the  help  of  a  minute  and  curious, 
though  not  scientific  or  open-minded  scholarship, 
laboured  to  represent  this  church  of  theirs  as  in- 
stituted of  God,  governed  and  inspired  by  Him, 
secured  from  the  moment  of  creation  till  now  in 
continuous  being  and  activity  by  the  orders  and 
instruments,  symbols  and  sacraments  that  were  the 
conditions  of  His  presence  and  the  media  of  His 
grace. 

2.  Now  these  differences  of  method  are  not  arbitrary 
or  accidental  ;  they  are  the  result  of  the  underlying 
differences  of  thought  or  belief,  of  theology  and  the 
religious  ideal.  As  this  is,  so  must  the  polity  be ; 
it  is  the  men  who  have  no  religious  ideal  that  have 
no  ideal  of  polity,  who,  without  any  preference  for 
what  ought  to  be,  accept  what  is  and  defend  it  as 
altogether  of  man — which  is  to  them  quite  as  good  as 
being  altogether  of  God.  The  men,  indeed,  who  have 
most  differed  in  method  have  often  seemed  to  agree 
in  end  ;  those  who  have  used,  and  those  who  have 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  1 3 


most  deeply  despised,  the  argument  from  expediency 
have  stood  often  together  within  the  pale  of  the  same 
church,  exponents  and  defenders  of  the  same  polity. 
But  the  association  was  accidental,  the  agreement 
only  apparent,  masking  the  utmost  distance  and 
dissonance  of  spirit.  The  church  defended  by  argu- 
ments from  expediency  is  no  city  of  God,  no  ideal  of 
the  Eternal  realized  in  time  ;  the  church  defended  by 
the  claims  of  divine  right  and  authority  must  be  of 
divine  institution  and  guidance,  to  be  a  church  at  all. 
The  man  who  sees  in  the  church  a  department  of  the 
State,  and  the  man  who  regards  it  as  a  direct  and 
miraculous  creation  of  God,  miraculously  governed, 
may  by  the  irony  of  circumstances  be  ecclesiastical 
brethren  ;  but  in  the  region  of  fundamental  belief 
they  are  absolutely  opposed,  their  only  possible  atti- 
tude to  each  other  being  one  of  radical  disagreement 
and  contradiction. 

This,  then,  brings  out  the  point  to  be  here  empha- 
sized :  in  all  such  discussions  the  really  cardinal  matter  is 
the  underlying  conception,  the  determinative  principle 
or  idea,  the  idea  of  religion.  The  ultimate  questions 
in  ecclesiastical  polity  are  religious.  What  have  to  be 
dealt  with  are  not  so  much  opposed  political  systems 
as  religious  conceptions  fundamentally  different  and 
distinct.  But  this  position  involves  another :  the 
fundamental  is  the  creative  and  regulative,  or  consti- 
tutive idea.  And  this  means  that  the  church  must 
be  construed  through  the  religion,  not  the  religion 
through  the  church.    The  one  must  harmonize  with 


1  4 


CATHOLICISM 


the  other  ;  but  the  creative  and  normative  idea  is  the 
religion,  the  church  the  created  and  accordant.  And 
the  latter  must  agree  with  the  former,  in  order  that 
it  may  be  its  interpreter,  the  agent  or  medium  for  its 
realization.  But  this  again  determines  the  order  of 
our  subsequent  discussions  :  we  must  discover  and 
define  the  idea  of  religion  that  we  may  find  the  ideal 
which  has  to  be  realized.  And  once  we  have  found 
it,  we  shall  be  in  a  position  to  discuss  and,  if  possible, 
determine  what  kind  or  order  of  polity  or  institution 
will  best  work  its  realization. 

§  III.  The  Idea  of  Religion 

I.  Of  the  idea  or  nature  of  religion  an  exhaustive 
discussion  is  not  here  possible ;  the  doctrine  and  its 
implicates  must  simply  be  stated  in  the  most  general 
way.  Well,  then,  religion  is  here  conceived  neither 
as  knowledge,  whether  described  with  Jacobi  as  faith, 
or  with  Schelling  as  intuition,  or  with  Hegel  as 
thought ;  nor  as  feeling,  whether  it  be,  as  with 
Schleiermacher,  the  feeling  of  dependence,  or,  as  with 
the  author  of  Natural  Religion,  of  admiration,  or,  as 
with  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  of  wonder  ;  nor  as  a  sort 
of  transfigured  morality,  whether  it  be  represented 
with  Lessing,  as  a  species  of  objective  conscience, 
meant  to  hasten  the  birth  and  action  of  the  subjective 
or  with  Kant,  as  duty  apprehended  as  a  divine 
command,  or  with  Matthew  Arnold,  as  "  morality 
touched  by  emotion."  Religion  is  no  one  of  these, 
yet  it  is  all  of  these — and  something  more.    Each  of 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  1 5 


these  definitions  is  simple  only  so  long  as  there  is  no 
analysis  ;  but  under  analysis  they  one  and  all  become 
as  complex  as  the  very  notion  they  seek  to  define. 
Religion,  indeed,  is  too  large  and  rich  a  thing  to 
be  defined  by  any  single  term  or  reduced  to  any 
single  element,  whether  intellectual,  emotional,  or 
moral  ;  it  too  completely  covers  and  comprehends  the 
whole  nature  of  man  to  be  denoted  by  a  name 
borrowed  from  a  section  of  his  experience,  or  from 
one  department  of  his  rational  activity.    And  so  one 
may  say  that  these  definitions,  taken  together,  would 
give  a  better  idea  of  religion  than  taken  singly  or 
in  isolation.     There  can  be   no   religion  without 
thought,  for  a  man  must  conceive  an  object  before 
he  can  sustain  any  rational  relation  to  it ;  not  to 
think,  is  to  be  without  reason,  and  where  no  reason 
is,  no  religion  can  be.    Nor  can  it  be  without  feeling, 
for    feeling,  though   distinguishable,  is  inseparable 
from  thought.    If  we  think,  we  must  feel  ;  if  we  feel, 
we  are  conscious  first  of  ourselves  as  subject,  and 
next  of  a  not-ourselves  or  object ;  and  it  depends  on 
how  we  conceive  the  object  whether  our  feeling  be 
one  of  dependence,  admiration,  or  wonder,  or  an 
emotion  higher  and  comprehensive  of  all  the  three. 
Nor  can  religion  exist  apart  from  conduct  or  con- 
science ;  for  man  cannot  conceive  himself  standing 
in  relation  to  a  supernatural  or  a  supreme  power, 
without  feeling  himself  constrained  to  act  either  in 
harmony  with  it  or  in  opposition  to  it,  and  as  subject 
to  its  judgment  either  of  approval  or  the  reverse. 


i6 


CATHOLICISM 


And  this  involves  the  direct  discipline  of  the  moral 
nature  and  the  exercise  of  the  moral  judgment. 

Where  the  product  includes  in  an  equal  degree 
intellectual,  emotional,  and  moral  elements,  it  cannot 
be  traced  to  the  sole  causation  of  either  the  intellect, 
or  the  heart,  or  the  conscience.  We  must  find,  then, 
a  notion  of  religion  large  enough  to  comprehend  these 
varied  elements,  able  also  to  bind  them  into  organic 
and  living  unity.  Now,  if  we  look  out  for  the  most 
general  characteristic  common  to  all  faiths,  we  would 
say  that  in  religion  man  conceives  and  realizes  him- 
self not  as  a  mere  sensuous  and  mortal  individual, 
but  as  spirit,  and  conscious  spirit,  who  has  overcome, 
or  who  is  endeavouring  to  overcome,  the  contradic- 
tions within  his  own  nature,  and  between  it  and  the 
order  or  system  under  and  within  which  he  lives. 
But  so  to  conceive  himself  is  to  be  for  himself  not 
simply  a  transitory  detached  or  isolated  individual, 
but  a  unit  who  is  a  member  of  an  organic  whole,  a 
being  with  universal  affinities,  and  relations  both  to 
the  seen  and  the  unseen — whether  the  unseen  be  con- 
ceived as  the  magic  present  in  a  fetish,  or  as  collective 
humanity  in  its  past,  present,  and  future,  or  as  an 
unknown  force,  or  as  a  known  and  living  God.  It  is 
hence  not  necessary  that  religion  be  theistic,  to  be  so 
conceived  ;  it  is  meanwhile  only  necessary  to  see  that 
man  so  conceiving  himself  and  his  relations  is  re- 
ligious. But  so  conceived,  religion  becomes  the  con- 
scious relation  of  man  as  spirit  to  the  creative  and 
universal  and  regnant  Spirit,  under  whatever  form  he 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  1 7 


may  conceive  Him  ;  in  other  and  homelier  and  more 
perfect  words,  religion  is  the  relation  realized  by  the 
man  who  knows  the  love  of  God,  loves  God,  and 
feels  bound  to  express  his  love  in  the  fittest  and 
surest  ways.  Here  thought,  feeling,  and  conduct  are 
all  contained,  and  stand  in  living  and  inseparable 
unity.  He  who  loves  God  knows  God,  lives  in 
harmony  with  the  will  he  loves,  and  for  its  ends. 

2.  But  it  is  necessary  that  some  of  the  more  sig- 
nificant principles  implied  in  this  position  be  made 
explicit. 

i.  The  determinative  idea  in  religion  is  the  idea  of 
God.  A  religion  always  is  as  its  deity  is — indeed, 
the  former  is  but  the  latter  become  explicit,  as  it  were 
the  explicated  idea  of  Him.  As  the  one  is  conceived, 
the  other  must  be  through  and  through.  A  religion 
is  perfect  in  the  degree  that  its  conception  of  God  is 
perfect ;  it  is  the  way  in  which  a  church  thinks  of 
God  that  determines  its  religious  place  and  power, 
whether  it  be  a  standing  or  a  falling  church.  And 
so  where  God  is  conceived  as  the  Absolutely  Good, 
as  if  He  were  the  personalized  moral  energy  of  the 
universe  working  beneficently  on  behalf  of  each  and 
of  all,  there  the  religion  ought  to  be  as  if  it  were  the 
organized  beneficence  of  humanity,  the  power  that 
works  by  divine  inspiration  for  human  good.  For  a 
religion  not  to  be  as  its  God  is,  is  to  be  a  thing  of 
falsest  nature,  a  satire  on  sincerity,  a  contradiction  to 
the  very  idea  of  the  truth. 

ii.  The  primary  and  causal  relation  in  religion  is 


CATHOLICISM 


not  man's  to  God,  but  God's  to  man.  His  action 
precedes  and  underlies  ours.  For  Him  to  be  is  to 
act ;  wherever  He  is  He  is  active,  and  His  action 
may  be  silent,  but  is  never  stayed  or  inoperative. 
Hence  God's  relation  to  man  is  the  basis  of  man's 
relation  to  God  ;  and  religion  is  but  man  become  so 
conscious  of  this  prior  relation  as  to  live  in  harmony 
with  it,  as  to  attempt  to  realize  the  life  and  ideals  and 
ends  that  come  through  it.  But  this  involves  the 
counterpart  and  complement  of  the  first  principle — 
viz.,  that  a  religious  man  always  is  as  his  God  is,  an 
image  or  miniature  of  Him,  a  form  realizing  in  time 
the  thought  of  the  Eternal.  But  so  construed  he 
becomes  not  simply  a  person  related  to  God,  but  a 
vehicle  of  the  divine  ideas,  an  organ  or  agent  of  the 
divine  purposes.  A  nature  that  touches  the  divine, 
and  exists  through  it,  must  be  penetrated  and  moved 
by  it ;  but  to  be  so  penetrated  and  moved  is  to  exist 
and  to  work  for  ends  that  are  God's,  though  they  may 
be  ends  that  can  only  be  realized  through  man.  The 
religious  individual  is  really  the  minister  of  a  uni- 
versal purpose,  a  temporal  agent  of  the  Eternal  will. 

iii.  The  function  or  end  of  the  religious  man  is  to 
be  a  minister  or  vehicle  of  the  divine  purposes  :  and  so 
the  function  or  office  of  religion  is  to  qualify  man  for 
this  work.  To  perform  it  he  must  have  a  nature 
more  or  less  open  to  God,  and  stand,  so  to  speak, 
in  a  relation  of  reciprocity  with  Him.  The  worst 
atheism  is  that  which  reduces  all  God's  action  in  the 
world  to  interference  or  miracle.    The  supernatural- 


THE  CHURCHES  AND   THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  1 9 


ism  which  limits  His  grace  and  truth  to  a  single 
church,  however  universal  it  may  claim  to  be,  pro- 
fanely expels  Him  from  nature  and  humanity. 
There  is  a  sense  in  which  the  highest  ecclesiasticism 
is  the  worst  theism  ;  it  lives  largely  by  its  denial  or 
limitation  of  Deity.  Nature  is,  because  God  every- 
where acts ;  religion  is,  because  He  is  the  ever- 
working  Spirit.  In  the  field  of  nature  He  acts 
through  forces  ;  in  the  field  of  history  He  acts 
through  persons,  and  the  persons  who  best  serve  Him 
are  religious  men,  i.e.,  the  men  who  so  love  the  divine 
will  as  to  labour  to  bring  everything  in  themselves 
and  in  society  into  harmony  with  it.  Such  men 
know  that  they  are  not  saved  for  their  own  sakes 
merely,  but  for  man's ;  that  to  be  religious  is  simply 
to  become  a  means  for  the  ends  of  God.  For  God 
governs  man  through  men  ;  great  and  good  person- 
alities are  the  chiefest  works  of  Providence,  the  agen- 
cies through  which  it  accomplishes  its  noblest  moral 
results.  There  is  no  contribution  to  the  common 
good  like  a  good  man  ;  through  him  the  mind  of  the 
race  is  lifted,  its  progress  effected,  something  done 
towards  the  embodiment  of  the  divine  ideas,  the 
realization  of  the  divine  order.  It  is  in  religion  as  in 
music.  Nature  is  full  of  musical  voices,  of  simple 
notes  that  sound  melodiously  in  every  ear ;  but  out 
of  these  the  cultured  and  quickened  imagination  of 
the  master  can  create  harmonies  such  as  Nature  never 
has  created  or  can  create — can  in  his  Oratorio  weave 
sounds  into  symphonies  so  wondrous  that  they  seem 


20 


CA  THOUCISM 


like  the  speech  of  the  gods  suddenly  breaking  arti- 
culate upon  the  ear  of  man,  speaking  of  passions, 
hopes,  fears,  joys  too  tumultuous  and  vast  for  the 
human  tongue  to  utter  ;  or  opening  and  interpreting 
for  mortals  a  world  where,  remote  from  discord  or 
dissonance,  thought  and  being  move  as  to  the  state- 
liest music.  So  in  the  spiritual  sphere  the  real  and 
holy  religious  person  is  the  master  spirit,  making 
audible  to  others  the  harmonies  his  imagination  is 
the  first  to  hear.  In  him  the  truths  and  ideas  of  God, 
as  yet  indistinctly  seen  or  partially  heard  by  the 
multitude,  are  embodied,  become  as  it  were  incarnate 
and  articulate,  assume  a  visible  and  strenuous  form 
that  they  may  inspire  men  to  nobler  deeds,  and  show 
them  how  to  create  a  higher  manhood  and  purer 
society.  For  these  two  stand  indissolubly  together ; 
the  most  distinctly  personal  is  still  a  collective  good, 
reduces  the  amount  of  evil  in  the  world,  augments 
the  forces  that  contend  against  it.  The  better  a 
man  is,  the  more  he  feels  the  burden  and  the  pain  of 
sorrow,  the  mightier  his  ambition  to  help  in  the 
creation  of  a  happier  and  a  more  perfect  state.  And 
as  his  most  individual  are  still  universal  ends,  he 
must  seek  the  help  of  the  like-minded,  attempt  to 
organize  the  good  against  the  evil  in  the  world. 
Thus,  as  religious  men  multiply,  the  enthusiasm  of 
pity  is  sure  to  increase,  the  energies  directed  against 
sin  and  suffering  are  certain  to  grow  more  victorious. 
Every  man  possessed  of  the  Spirit  of  God  feels  the 
divine  passion  in  the  presence  of  sin  :  and  so  in  him 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  21 


and  his  society,  to  the  degree  of  their  capacity,  the 
redeeming  energies  of  God  may  be  said  to  work. 
The  end  of  the  Church  is  the  salvation  of  the  world, 
its  redemption  from  the  pain  under  which  it  has 
travailed  from  creation  until  now. 

3.  Let  us  see,  then,  whither  our  analysis  of  the  idea 
of  religion  has  conducted  us  : — Religion  is  essentially 
a  relation  of  harmonious  activity  with  the  will  of 
God  ;  the  man  who  realizes  this  relation  is  a  religious 
man,  the  society  which  exists  through  and  for  its 
realization  is  a  religious  society.  So  understood, 
religion  may  be  regarded,  on  the  one  side,  as  God's 
method  or  way  of  working  out  His  beneficent 
purposes  ;  on  the  other,  as  man's  following  the  way 
that  he  may  fulfil  the  ends  of  God.  Through  religion 
God  creates  the  order,  works  the  progress,  and 
achieves  the  good  of  mankind  ;  and  His  agent  or 
organ  throughout  is  the  religious  man  and  society. 
From  this  point  of  view,  everything  that  makes  for 
human  happiness  and  wholeness  is  of  religion  ;  what- 
ever fears  man's  growth  in  freedom,  in  culture,  in 
science,  in  everything  meant  by  progress  and  civili- 
zation, may  be  ecclesiastical,  but  is  not  religious. 
The  organized  society  that  seeks  to  enforce  respect 
for  its  orders,  observance  of  its  ritual,  participation  in 
its  worship,  submission  to  its  authority  by  invoking 
the  terrors  of  the  world  to  come,  may  be  a  church, 
but  is  not  a  religion.  The  distinctive  note  of  the 
latter  is  that  it  looks  at  the  duties  of  the  moment  in 
the  light  of  eternity,  the  character  and  needs  of  the 


22 


CA  THOLICISM 


individual  as  in  the  presence  of  the  universal  and  in 
relation  to  the  imperishable  ;  and  it  does  this  not 
that  it  may  despise  time  and  the  individual,  but  that 
it  may  magnify  both ;  not  that  it  may  enfeeble,  but 
that  it  may  enlarge  and  strengthen  duty ;  not  that  it 
may  weaken  the  worth  of  character  or  make  light  of 
human  need,  but  that  it  may  lend  a  mightier  import 
to  the  one,  and  give  a  vaster  reach  to  the  other. 
The  men  who  live  as  for  eternity,  believing  that  the 
problem  of  their  being  is,  in  harmony  with  the  will 
of  their  Creator,  to  work  out  the  ultimate  order  and 
good  of  the  universe,  live  under  the  noblest  and 
humanest  inspiration  possible  to  man.  And  this  is 
the  inspiration  given  by  religion  ;  to  have  it  is  to 
breathe  the  thoughtful  breath  that  comes  of  a  living 
faith.  But  this  idea  of  religion  requires,  as  a  clear 
necessity,  that  the  polity  which  seeks  to  articulate 
and  incorporate  and  realize  it  be  a  polity  that  allows 
the  religious  society  to  live  under  the  inspiration  of 
its  own  ideals,  under  the  control  of  its  own  truths, 
obedient  to  its  own  laws,  altogether  as  a  society 
whose  energies  and  ends  are  all  religious  and  all  of 
God. 

§  IV.  The  Ideal  of  Religion  Embodied  in  Jesus 
Christ 

But  so  far  the  discussion  has  been  almost  purely 
deductive  ;  and  so  it  may  be  as  well  to  confirm  and 
illustrate  the  conclusion  from  the  inductive  or  histor- 
ical side.    To  discuss  the  abstract  idea  of  religion  is 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  23 


a  small  thing  ;  it  is  a  greater  to  look  at  it  as  em- 
bodied and  expressed  in  the  supreme  religious 
personality  of  the  race.  In  Jesus  Christ  what  we 
term  the  ideal  was  realized,  perfect  religion  became 
a  living  and  articulate  reality.  Through  His  only- 
begotten  Son,  God  declared  what  He  meant  and 
what  He  means  man  to  be. 

1.  We  must  interpret  Christ's  idea  of  religion 
through  His  life.  That  life  was  one  of  remarkable 
simplicity,  but  still  more  remarkable  significance. 
There  were  in  His  day  two  traditional  ideals  of  the 
religious  life,  the  priest's  and  the  scribe's  ;  but  His  did 
not  conform  to  either.  The  priest's  made  the  temple, 
with  its  worship  and  priesthood,  the  great  factor  of 
religion  ;  in  the  temple  God  was  to  be  found,  the 
way  into  His  presence  was  through  His  priests,  the 
method  of  winning  His  favour  or  obtaining  pardon 
was  by  their  sacrifices.  The  holy  man  was  the  man 
who  came  often  to  the  temple  and  made  generous  use 
of  its  priesthood,  places,  articles  and  modes  of  worship. 
Worship  conducted  by  authorized  persons  within  the 
sacred  place  and  in  the  established  way,  became  the 
very  essence  of  religion  ;  and  the  priesthood  them- 
selves are  our  witnesses  as  to  how  completely  their 
ceremonial  had  swallowed  up  God's  moral  law.  The 
ideal  of  the  scribes  was  different,  yet  akin  ;  it  was 
made  up  of  rules,  constituted  by  regulations  as  to  the 
doing  and  ordering  of  the  sensuous  things  of  life.  It 
observed  days  and  months  and  seasons,  was  great 
in  fasts  and  alms,  in  times  and  modes  of  prayer.  It 


24 


CATHOLICISM 


found  great  merit  in  phylacteries  and  in  the  reading 
of  the  Scriptures  ;  it  was  devotedly  loyal  to  the 
unwritten  law,  which  was  formed  of  ancient  custom, 
the  decisions  of  the  great  synagogue  or  council  of 
their  church,  and  the  wisdom  of  the  fathers.  Know- 
ledge of  this  law  was  the  most  esteemed  learning,  and 
the  esteem  was  expressed  in  a  notable  way  ;  the  man 
wise  enough  to  interpret  the  law  made  laws  by  his 
interpretations.  And  so  the  holy  man  of  the  scribe 
forgot  no  sacred  day  or  solemn  time,  neglected  no 
fast,  gave  alms  of  all  he  had,  prayed  by  book,  wor- 
shipped according  to  rule,  and  otherwise  toiled  and 
comported  himself  as  became  a  man  who  lived  by  a 
written  and  traditional  code.  Excellent  men  they 
were — honest,  scrupulous,  faithful  in  the  minutest 
things,  only  forgetful  that  the  kingdom  and  truth  of 
God  were  infinitely  wider  than  their  law.  And  here 
the  kinship  of  the  ideals  appears  ;  both  could  make 
scrupulous,  neither  could  make  magnanimous,  men. 
Each  had  had  its  heroes,  who  had  suffered,  and  even 
died,  in  defence  of  altar  and  ritual,  or  through  fidelity 
to  all  the  ordinances  of  the  law  ;  but  neither  had 
produced  a  man  possessed  of  the  enthusiasm  of 
humanity,  full  of  holy  passion  for  the  universal  or 
humane  moral  ends  of  God.  The  man  who  has  the 
strength  of  fanaticism  in  things  sacerdotal  is  by  this 
very  fact  made  a  stranger  to  the  spirit  and  inspiration 
of  true  religion. 

For  let  us  look  at  Jesus  in  relation  to  the  priest 
and  the  scribe.     His  ideal  stood  in  so  sharp  an 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  25 


antithesis  to  theirs  that  He  was  unintelligible  to  both, 
was  regarded  and  treated  by  both  as  an  absolute 
enemy.  In  the  eye  of  the  scribe  He  was  a  religious 
alien,  standing  outside  the  continuity  and  catholicity 
of  Jewish  tradition  and  doctrine  ;  in  the  eye  of  the 
priest  He  broke  the  unity  of  the  order  and  worship 
established  of  old  by  God,  consecrated  by  law  and 
custom,  possessed  of  divine  authority,  the  very 
symbol  of  the  national  life  and  condition  of  the 
people's  well-being.  His  home  was  in  Galilee,  remote 
from  the  city  of  the  religion  where  the  priest  was  the 
ruler  and  the  sacerdotal  was  also  the  civil  law.  When 
He  visited  their  city  the  priests  could  not  understand 
Him,  for  His  temple  and  worship  were  spiritual,  His 
God  was  a  Father  who  made  sacrifices  to  save  men, 
and  did  not  need  incense  and  sacrifices  and  burnt- 
offerings  to  become  propitious  towards  them.  And 
so  they  knew  not  what  to  do  with  Him,  knew  only 
how  to  hate  Him,  and  how  to  glut  their  hate  in  the 
infamy  and  death  of  the  cross.  In  the  province 
where  He  familiarly  lived,  the  distance  of  the  priest 
and  the  presence  of  the  Gentile  made  the  atmosphere 
clearer,  ritual  law  and  custom  less  rigid  ;  and  so  it 
was  more  favourable  to  a  religious  development 
regulated  throughout  by  the  spontaneous  and  normal 
action  of  His  own  ideal.  But  here  He  met  the 
Pharisee  and  the  scribe,  and  their  relation  to  Him 
was  one  of  radical  contradiction  and  fretful  collision, 
proceeding  from  their  fanatical  devotion  to  the 
traditions  of  the  fathers  and  their  consequent  inability 


26 


CA  THOLICISM 


to  understand  His  spirit  and  His  truth.  In  His 
daily  and  familiar  life  they  found  none  of  the  custom- 
ary signs  of  religion — fasting,  alms,  the  phylactery, 
stated  forms  and  times  and  places  for  prayer,  cere- 
monial cleanliness,  punctilious  observance  of  the 
Sabbath  law  and  customs  ;  nay,  they  found  not  only 
these  absent,  but  a  conduct  that  seemed  studiously  to 
offend — kindly  speech  to  Gentiles,  association  with 
publicans  and  sinners,  unheard-of  liberty  allowed  to 
His  disciples  and  claimed  for  Himself  on  the  Sab- 
bath ;  and  the  right  to  do  all  this  vindicated  by  the 
denial  of  the  authority  of  tradition  and  the  elders, 
and  by  the  assertion  of  His  own.  It  was  to  these 
scrupulous  and  conscientious  men  all  very  sad,  even 
awful ;  and  so  they  judged  Him  a  profane  person, 
acting  from  no  other  purpose  or  motive  than  to 
destroy  the  law  and  the  prophets.  As  later  the 
Christians,  too  religious  to  be  understood  of  the 
heathen,  were  judged  to  be  men  without  religion,  and 
condemned  as  atheists  ;  so  Christ,  without  any  of  the 
notes  distinctive  of  sacerdotal  and  legal  piety,  was 
deemed  altogether  impious  and  declared  worthy  of 
death. 

2.  But  to  the  men  He  called  and  made  clear  of 
eye  and  open  of  vision,  the  real  secret  of  His  spirit 
stood  disclosed.  They  saw  that  the  denials  were  the 
accidents  of  His  life ;  but  the  affirmation  of  a  new 
religious  ideal  was  its  essence.  Of  this  ideal  the 
prophets  had  dreamed,  but  He  made  it  an  articulate 
reality.    God  was  to  Him  what  He  had  never  yet 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE -IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  2J 


been  to  man — a  living  Father,  loving,  loved,  in 
whom  He  was  embosomed,  through  whom  and  to 
whom  He  lived.  He  knew  no  moment  without  His 
presence  ;  suffered  no  grief  the  Father  did  not  share  ; 
tasted  no  joy  He  did  not  send  ;  spoke  no  word  that 
was  not  of  Him  ;  did  no  act  that  was  not  obedience 
to  His  will.  Where  the  relation  was  so  immediately 
filial  and  beautiful,  the  mediation  of  a  priest  would 
have  been  an  impertinence,  the  use  of  his  sacrifices 
and  forms  an  estrangement — the  coming  of  a  cold, 
dark  cloud  between  the  radiant  soul  of  the  Son  and 
the  gracious  face  of  the  Father.  Where  true  love 
lives  it  must  use  its  own  speech,  speak  in  its  own 
name,  and  feel  that  it  must  touch  and,  as  it  were, 
hold  with  its  own  hands  the  higher  love  that  loved  it 
into  being.  And  because  He  stood  so  related  to  the 
Father,  He  and  the  Father  had  one  love,  one  work, 
one  will,  one  end.  To  see  Him  was  to  see  the 
Father  ;  His  working  was  the  Father's.  Through 
Him  God  lived  among  men  ;  the  glory  men  beheld 
in  Him  was  the  glory  of  the  Only  Begotten,  the 
incarnated  grace  and  truth.  And  so  this  love  of  God 
was  love  of  man  ;  in  the  Son  of  Man  the  Father  of 
men  served  His  children,  and  humanity  came  to 
know  its  God  and  the  things  in  which  He  delighted. 
The  best  service  of  God  was  a  ministry  that  redeemed 
from  sin,  a  sacrifice  that  saved  from  death.  The 
wonderful  thing  in  religion  was  not  what  man  gave 
to  God,  but  what  God  gave  to  man — the  good,  the 
truth,  the  love — the  way  in  which  He  bore  his  sins  and 


2S 


CATHOLICISM 


carried  his  sorrows,  made  human  guilt  an  occasion 
for  divine  pity,  and  the  cure  of  hate  the  work  of  love. 
What  God  is  among  His  worlds  Jesus  was  among 
men.  He  is  the  mind  and  heart  of  God  personalized 
for  humanity  ;  His  universal  ideal  realized.  And  after 
what  manner  did  this  realized  ideal  live?  As  em- 
bodied compassion,  beneficence,  truth,  love,  working 
for  the  complete  redemption  of  men.  Every  kind  of 
evil  was  to  Him  a  misery  from  which  He  could  not  but 
seek  to  save.  Disease  He  loved  to  cure  ;  poverty  He 
pitied,  doing  His  utmost  to  create  the  temper  before 
which  it  should  cease  ;  the  common  afflictions  of  man 
touched  Him  with  sympathy,  subdued  Him  to  tears. 
But  what  moved  Him  most  was  moral  evil — the  sight 
of  man  in  the  hands  of  sin  ;  and  in  order  to  save  him 
from  it,  He  took  an  altogether  new  way.  He  dis- 
missed the  venerable  methods  and  impotent  formal- 
isms of  the  priest  and  the  scribe  ;  and  went  in  among 
the  guilty,  that  He  might  in  the  very  heart  of  their 
guilt  awaken  the  love  of  good  and  of  God.  He  did 
not  feel  that  He  condescended,  only  that  His  love 
was  a  sweet  compulsion  to  save ;  they  did  not  feel 
His  condescension,  only  the  goodness  that  was  too 
pure  for  their  sin  to  sully,  that  so  thought  of  their 
good  as  to  win  their  souls  for  God.  And  the  result 
was  altogether  wonderful.  The  laws  of  the  scribe  and 
the  religion  of  the  priest  had  only  divided  men — had 
made  good  and  evil  accidents  of  custom,  not  qualities 
and  states  of  the  living  person,  had  cured  no  sinner, 
had  only  created  fictitious  sins,  the  more  damning 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  2Q 


that  they  were  so  false.  But  the  new  spirit  and  way 
of  Christ  found  the  common  manhood  of  men,  united 
them,  made  sin  moral,  change  from  it  possible, 
even  a  duty  ;  made  religion  seem  like  the  concen- 
trated and  organized  moral  energy  of  God  work- 
ing redemptively  through  men  on  behalf  of  man. 
There  never  was  a  grander  or  more  fruitful  revolution 
of  thought,  more  needed  on  earth,  more  manifestly 
of  heaven.  He  who  accomplished  it  was  indeed  a 
Redeemer  ;  through  Him  religion  ceased  to  be  an 
affair  of  the  priest  or  the  magistrate,  transacted  in 
the  temple  and  conducted  by  a  ceremonial  which  was 
prescribed  by  law ;  and  became  the  supreme  concern 
of  man,  covering  his  whole  life,  working  in  every  way 
for  his  amelioration,  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than 
the  perfect  virtue  and  happiness  alike  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  race — in  simple  truth,  God's  own 
method  for  realizing  in  man  His  ideal  of  humanity. 

3.  As  Jesus  lived  He  taught ;  His  teaching  but 
articulated  the  ideal  He  embodied  in  His  character 
and  life.  One  thing  in  that  teaching  is  most  remark- 
able— the  complete  absence  of  sacerdotal  ideas,  the 
non-recognition  of  those  customs  and  elements  men 
had  been  wont  to  think  essential  to  religion.  He 
spoke  of  Himself  as  a  teacher,  never  as  a  priest ; 
assumed  no  priestly  office,  performed  no  priestly 
function,  breathed  an  atmosphere  that  had  no  sacer- 
dotal odour,  that  was  full  only  of  the  largest  and  most 
fragrant  humanity.  He  instituted  no  sacerdotal  office 
or  rite,  appointed  no  man  to  any  sacerdotal  duty, 


3° 


CA  THOLICISM 


sent  His  disciples  forth  to  be  teachers  or  preachers, 
made  no  man  of  them  a  priest,  created  no  order  of 
priesthood  to  which  any  man  could  belong.  Worship 
to  Him  was  a  matter  of  the  Spirit ;  it  needed  no 
consecrated  place  or  person — needed  only  the  heart 
of  the  son  to  be  real  before  the  Father.  The  best 
worship  was  obedience ;  the  man  perfect  as  God  is 
perfect  was  the  man  who  pleased  God.  His  beati- 
tudes were  all  reserved  for  ethical  qualities  of  mind, 
were  never  promised  on  any  ceremonial  or  sacerdotal 
condition.  His  good  man  was  "  poor  in  spirit," 
"  meek,"  "  merciful,"  "pure  in  heart,"  "hungering  after 
righteousness,"  "a  peacemaker."  In  describing  His 
ideal  of  goodness  He  found  its  antitheses  in  the 
ideals  of  the  temple  and  tradition.  His  example  of 
universal  benevolence  was  "the  good  Samaritan";  its 
contradiction  the  priest  and  the  Levite.  True  prayer 
was  illustrated  by  the  penitent  publican,  false  by  the 
formal  Pharisee.  The  parables  that  vindicated  His 
treatment  of  sinners  enforced  the  high  doctrine  that 
nothing  was  so  agreeable  to  God  as  their  salvation, 
that  the  mission  of  the  godlike  was  to  seek  and  save 
them.  The  duty  that  summarized  all  others  was  love 
to  God  ;  the  man  that  loved  most  obeyed  best — for  he 
could  not  but  obey.  To  love  God  was  to  love  man, 
to  love  the  Divine  Spirit  was  to  do  a  divine  part,  to 
be  pitiful,  to  forgive  as  God  forgives,  to  bear  ill  and 
do  good,  to  act  unto  others  in  a  godlike  way  that 
they  might  be  won  to  godlike  conduct.  And  He  did 
not  conceive  good  men  as  isolated  —  they  formed  a 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  3 1 


society,  a  kingdom.  The  citizens  of  His  kingdom 
were  the  men  who  heard  His  voice  and  followed  His 
way.  God  reigned  in  and  over  them,  and  they 
existed  for  His  ends,  to  create  good  and  overcome 
evil.  The  kingdom  they  constituted  was  "  of  heaven," 
opposed  in  source  and  nature  to  those  founded  in  the 
despotisms  and  iniquities  of  earth ;  and  also  "  of 
God,"  proceeded  from  the  Creator  and  Sovereign  of 
man,  that  His  own  high  order  might  be  realized. 
Such  being  its  nature,  it  could  be  incorporated  in 
no  polity,  organized  under  no  local  forms,  into  no 
national  or  temporal  system  ;  it  was  a  "  kingdom 
of  the  truth,"  and  all  who  were  of  the  truth  belonged 
to  it.  It  was  a  sublime  idea ;  the  good  and  holy  of 
every  land  and  race  were  gathered  into  a  glorious 
fellowship,  dwelt  together,  however  far  apart  or 
mutually  unknown,  as  citizens  of  the  same  Eternal 
City,  with  all  their  scattered  energies  so  unified  by 
the  will  of  God  as  to  be  co-ordinated  and  co-operant 
factors  of  human  progress  and  happiness.  Men  have 
not  yet  risen  to  the  clear  and  full  comprehension  Oi 
this  ideal  ;  and  the  tardiest  in  reaching  it  are  those 
organized  polities  or  institutions  which  boast  them- 
selves sole  possessors  of  Christ's  truth  and  life. 

The  meaning  of  Christ's  person  and  teaching  for 
our  thesis  is  too  evident  to  need  detailed  discussion. 
To  Christian  men  He  is  the  normal  and  normative 
religious  person — i.e.,  the  person  whose  living  is 
their  law,  who  made  the  standard  to  which  they 
ought  to  conform,  and  who  distributes  the  influences 


32 


CA  THOLICISM 


creative  of  conformity.  Now,  in  Him  religion  was 
a  perfect  relation  to  God  expressed  in  speech  and 
action  creative  of  a  perfect  humanity,  a  humanity 
made  through  knowledge  of  God  obedient  to  Him. 
As  embodied  in  Him,  religion  was  in  the  presence 
of  sin  and  sorrow  a  holy  passion,  a  suffering  unto 
sacrifice  due  to  a  love  that  identified  the  sinless 
Seeker  with  the  sinner  He  sought ;  but  in  the 
presence  of  the  salvability  of  man,  it  was  an  enthu- 
siasm of  redemption,  the  victorious  working  of  the 
Spirit  that  can  spare  no  evil  and  can  be  pleased 
with  no  good  that  falls  short  of  the  perfection 
which  can  alone  satisfy  God.  So  understood,  religion 
is  man's  living  in  loving  and  holy  harmony  with 
the  will  of  God  ;  and  its  work,  the  creation  of  a 
humanity  that  shall  in  all  its  persons,  relations, 
and  institutions,  express  and  realize  this  harmony. 

§  V.  The  Ideal  of  Christ  and  the  Christian  Churches 

Such  then  is  the  ideal  of  the  religion  of  Christ ; 
we  have  now  to  discuss  briefly  the  relation  of  the 
churches  to  it. 

I.  Our  fundamental  principle  here  is  this :  The 
churches  exist  by  the  religion,  and  for  it ;  the  religion 
does  not  exist  because  of  the  churches,  or  for  them. 
The  religion  is  the  creative,  the  church  the  created 
idea ;  and  here,  as  everywhere,  the  law  ought  to 
be  valid,  that  the  measure  of  truth  for  the  created 
idea  is  that  it  shall  harmonize  with  and  truly 
express    the    creative.     The    churches    must  be 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  33 


construed  through  the  religion,  not  the  religion 
through  the  churches.  It  is  true  independently 
of  them,  but  they  are  right  only  as  they  are  in 
nature  and  character  throughout  accordant  with  it. 
Now  this  accordancy  may  be  tested  in  two  ways : 
either  by  comparing  the  two  ideals,  that  of  the 
church  and  that  of  the  religion,  or  by  the  simple 
historical  inquiry,  Has  the  church  made  the  people 
among  whom  it  has  lived  fulfil,  individually  and 
collectively,  Christ's  ideal,  or  approximate  to  the 
fulfilment  of  it?  The  latter  is  a  grave  question 
for  all  the  churches.  The  degree  in  which  they 
have  worked  this  realization  is  the  measure  of 
their  success ;  the  degree  in  which  they  have  not, 
is  the  measure  of  their  failure. 

It  would  lead  into  a  region  I  am  most  anxious 
to  avoid,  were  any  attempt  here  made  at  detailed 
comparative  criticism  of  the  ecclesiastical  and  the 
religious  ideal.  Our  purpose  is  more  positive,  by 
discussing  the  religious  to  show  what  the  ecclesi- 
astical ought  to  be.  Yet  it  may  emphasize  this 
purpose  and  illustrate  the  idea  which  underlies  it, 
if  we  look  in  the  light  of  our  previous  discussions 
at  the  spirit  and  motives  which  produced  the 
Anglican  revival  of  sixty  years  ago.  That  revival 
was  at  its  birth  distinctly  doctrinal  or  ideal,  and 
though  it  used  history  to  support  and  commend 
its  idea,  it  did  so  at  first  in  faith  rather  than  with 
knowledge.  The  success  that  attended  this  use  was 
more  due  to  a  courage  that  walked  fearlessly  into 

3 


34 


CA  THOLICISM 


the  unknown  than  to  any  clear  light  of  science. 
When  one  turns  to  the  tracts  and  treatises  of  the 
period,  one  wonders,  when  regard  is  had  to  the 
historical  material  and  the  method  of  handling  it, 
at  the  extraordinary  effects  they  produced.  Keble, 
Newman,  and  Pusey  are  indeed  illustrious  names ; 
at  no  time  has  the  church  of  England  or  the 
University  of  Oxford  had  names  more  venerated 
or  worthier  of  honour.  But  the  work  they  did  was 
accomplished  through  what  they  brought  to  history, 
not  through  what  they  found  in  it ;  at  least,  through 
what  they  found  only  so  far  as  it  was  the  vehicle 
of  what  they  brought.  The  movement  they  in- 
augurated may  be  described  as  a  movement  for  the 
recovery  of  the  lost  or  forgotten  ideal  of  the  Anglican 
church.  They,  at  the  bidding  of  conscience,  worked 
out  the  ideal  from  their  own  consciousnesses,  and 
then  they  made  inroads  into  history,  in  search 
of  the  means  of  realization,  though  their  researches 
and  labours  were,  in  the  case  of  many,  to  have  a 
tragic  effect  upon  the  ideal.  Still  the  motive  or 
spring  of  their  endeavour  was  the  wish  to  call  into 
being  a  nobler  faith,  the  belief  that  their  church 
was  one  of  apostolic  descent,  of  continuous  life, 
supernatural  endowment  and  divine  authority. 

In  order  that  they  might  evoke  and  vivify  this 
faith,  they  tried  to  enrich  the  church  of  to-day 
with  the  wealth  of  all  her  yesterdays,  to  adorn  her 
age  with  the  grace  of  her  youth  and  the  fruitful 
strength  of  her  maturity.    And  so  they  recalled  the 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  35 

memories  of  her  illustrious  saints  and  fathers,  woke 
into  speech  the  long  silent  wisdom  of  her  divines 
and  teachers,  searched  out  and  restored  her  ancient 
treasuries  of  devotion,  her  richest  and  sweetest  forms 
for  the  service  of  God.  They  studied  how  to  make 
again  significant  and  symbolical,  or,  as  they  loved 
to  think,  beautiful  with  holiness,  her  homes  and 
temples  of  worship ;  how  to  deepen  the  mystery  and 
enhance  the  efficacy  of  her  sacraments  ;  how  to  invest 
with  all  needed  virtue  and  authority  her  orders 
and  her  offices — in  a  word,  how  to  make  her  live 
to  the  eye  of  the  imagination  as  to  the  eye  of  faith 
arrayed  in  all  the  grace  of  her  Lord,  clothed  in  all 
the  dignity  and  loveliness  of  the  historical  "  Holy 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church."  The  ideal  was 
at  once  winsome  and  majestic,  well  fitted  to  awe 
into  reverence  and  inspire  with  the  enthusiasm  of 
devotion.  It  came  like  a  revelation  to  an  age  weary 
of  a  hard  and  pragmatic  evangelicalism,  with  its 
prosaic  spirit,  narrow  interests  and  formal  methods 
of  reconciling  God  and  man.  It  appealed  to  the 
imagination  which  Romanticism  had  touched  and 
quickened,  doing  for  the  church  what  the  poetry 
of  Wordsworth  had  done  for  nature,  and  the  novels 
of  Scott  for  the  national  history.  A  new  notion 
of  religion  came  through  the  new  idea,  and  the  men 
it  penetrated  and  held  were  like  men  possessed  of 
a  new  spirit  of  worship,  a  seemlier,  a  more  reverent 
and  holy  sense  of  God.  We  need  not  wonder  at 
its  victories ;  man  would  have  been  more  ignoble 


36 


CATHOLICISM 


than  he  is  if  he  had  remained  insensible  to  its 
charm.  Happily,  for  human  nature  and  progress, 
there  is  no  law  more  sure  in  its  operation  than 
this — that  a  belief  ennobles  in  proportion  to  its  own 
nobility ;  what  has  no  intrinsic  goodness  can  never 
evoke  enthusiasm  for  good. 

2.  But  it  is  not  enough  to  construe  the  Anglican 
ideal  through  the  notion  of  the  church  ;  it  is  neces- 
sary to  study  and  criticise  it  through  the  idea  of  the 
religion.  This  is  not  only  to  change  the  point  of 
view,  but  it  is  to  assume  a  much  higher  one  ;  for 
religion  being  greater  than  the  church,  a  rich  and 
sublime  ecclesiastical  may  be  a  poor  and  mean 
religious  ideal.  The  question  here,  then,  is — whether 
the  Anglican  ideal  did  really  articulate  and  faithfully 
interpret  the  religion  of  Christ :  whether  it  trans- 
lated into  visible  speech  and  living  form  for  the 
people  and  state  of  England  His  mind  as  to  His 
society  or  kingdom.  Here  the  main  point  of  the 
problem  does  not  relate  to  a  great  clerical  and  sacer- 
dotal corporation,  instituted  for  the  maintenance  and 
realization  of  worship  ;  but  to  a  society  that  claims 
to  embody  and  to  work  for  the  completer  embodi- 
ment in  everything  and  in  every  one  of  the  order  and 
ideas  of  God,  of  the  spirit  and  truth  of  Christ.  This 
is  a  larger,  grander,  and  harder  matter  than  the 
creation  of  a  clerical  corporation,  and  implies  two 
things  :  on  the  one  side,  a  clear  and  complete  com- 
prehension of  the  idea  of  the  religion,  and  on  the 
other,  a  full  and  sufficient  articulation  of  the  same  in 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  37 


the  institutions  and  agencies  needed  to  its  reali- 
zation. Now  when  we  analyze  the  principles  or 
elements  that  underlie  the  Anglican  ideal,  what  do 
we  find  ?  A  singularly  imperfect  and  narrow  idea  of 
religion,  supported  by  an  equally  narrow  and  one- 
sided theory  as  to  human  nature,  as  to  history  and 
providence,  as  to  God  and  man  in  themselves  and  in 
their  mutual  relations.  On  the  one  side,  the  ideal 
rested  on  the  twin  pillars  of  a  great  doubt  and  a 
great  fear.  It  doubted  the  presence  of  God  in 
humanity,  the  activity  and  reality  of  His  grace 
outside  the  limits  of  a  constituted  church,  and  apart 
from  sacramental  persons,  instruments  and  symbols. 
It  doubted  the  sanity  of  the  reason  He  had  given, 
thought  that  this  reason  had  so  little  affinity  with  its 
Maker  as  to  be  ever  tending  away  from  Him,  its 
bent  by  nature  being  from  God  rather  than  to  God. 
And  so  it  was  possessed  of  the  great  fear  that  the 
reason,  freed  from  the  authority  and  guardian  care  of 
an  organized  and  apostolic  church,  i.e.  clergy,  would 
infallibly  break  from  the  control  of  His  law  and  His 
truth.  It  thus  made  man  an  atheist  by  nature, 
and  so  confined  divine  influence  to  artificial  and 
ordained  channels  as  to  make  the  common  life,  which 
most  needs  to  be  illumined  and  ennobled  by  the 
divine,  either  vacant  of  God  or  alien  from  Him. 
And  so  it  enriched  the  church  by  impoverishing 
humanity,  what  it  took  from  the  one  being  its  loftiest 
ideals,  what  it  gave  to  the  other  being  but  their 
sensuous  and  baser  counterfeits.    On  the  other  and 


38 


CATHOLICISM 


more  positive  side,  this  ideal  implied  principles  that 
had  no  place  in  the  mind  of  Christ,  or  any  real 
affinity  to  His  free  and  gracious  spirit.  Its  most 
beautiful  quality  was  its  reverence  ;  it  was  possessed 
by  the  enthusiasm  of  devotion  ;  but  even  here  it 
knew  too  little  of  His  joyous  and  sweet  spon- 
taneity, the  glad  and  trustful  filial  spirit  that  loved 
immediate  speech  and  fellowship  with  the  Father. 
Then  its  ideal  of  duty  was  too  ecclesiastical  to  be 
His,  was  without  His  large  beneficence  and  healthful 
humanity.  Its  knowledge  of  Him  was  mediaeval,  not 
primitive  ;  the  Christ  it  knew  was  the  Christ  of 
mystery  and  sacraments,  not  the  Christ  of  Nature  and 
of  God.  He  did  not  love  tradition,  did  not  believe 
in  the  sanctity  of  formularies,  in  the  holiness  of  fasts, 
the  sin  and  apostasy  of  all  who  refused  to  conform 
to  the  priestly  law  or  order.  And  what  He  did  not 
love  for  Himself,  He  could  not  love  for  His  people  ; 
what  displeased  Him  in  Judaism,  He  could  not  be 
pleased  to  see  crystallized  round  Himself.  The 
living  man,  the  conscious  home  and  son  of  God, 
with  love  breaking  into  spontaneous  speech  and  filial 
act,  was  more  to  Him  than  the  orderly  observance  of 
ritual,  or  than  the  stateliest  worship  of  the  temple. 
His  ideal  of  worship  was  filial  love  expressed  in  filial 
speech  and  conduct;  and  this  love  made  all  places 
sacred,  all  times  holy,  all  service  religious,  all  actions 
duties  done  to  the  Father  in  heaven.  There  never 
was  a  humaner  or  saner  ideal,  one  that  so  consecrated 
and  elevated  the  whole  man,  so  penetrated  and  trans- 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  39 


figured  his  whole  life.  Its  essential  elements  were  all 
natural,  and  in  no  degree  sacerdotal,  traditional,  or 
ecclesiastical ;  where  man  knew  God  as  the  Father 
and  himself  as  a  son,  worship  could  not  but  be  ;  not 
elsewhere  or  in  other  sort  was  worship  possible. 

3.  Now,  it  is  by  this  vaster  and  grander  yet  simpler 
ideal  that  the  Anglican  must  be  measured  ;  it  must 
fulfil  the  idea  of  Christ  to  be  a  true  ideal  for  a 
Christian  church.  We  may  not  draw  conclusions 
that  only  a  detailed  comparison,  running  along  many 
lines,  would  warrant ;  but  two  sayings,  an  Anglican 
and  a  Christian,  may  be  compared.  Here  is  the 
Anglican  :  "  There  is  a  well-known  sect,  which  denies 
both  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper.  A  churchman 
must  believe  its  members  to  be  altogether  external  to 
the  fold  of  Christ.  Whatever  benevolent  work  they 
may  be  able  to  show,  still,  if  we  receive  the  church 
doctrine  concerning  the  means  generally  necessary 
to  salvation,  we  must  consider  such  persons  to  be 
mere  heathens,  except  in  knowledge."  1  That  is  the 
church's  doctrine.  Here  is  Christ's  :  2  "  Whosoever 
shall  do  the  will  of  My  Father  which  is  in  heaven, 
the  same  is  My  brother,  and  sister,  and  mother."  In 
the  light  of  Christ's  doctrine  the  church's  looks  hard, 
and  mean,  and  false  enough.  A  theory  that  has  to 
make  mere  heathens  of  some  of  the  most  beautiful 
and  devoted  spirits  that  have  adorned  the  religion 


1  J.  H.  Newman,  Via  Media,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  29-30  (1877). 

2  Matt.  xii.  50. 


4o 


CATHOLICISM 


and  promoted  the  philanthropies  of  modern  times, 
may  be  good  ecclesiasticism,  but  it  is  bad  Christi- 
anity. The  difference  between  the  doctrines  is  the 
difference  between  two  ideals,  that  of  the  Son  of  Man 
and  that  of  the  Son  of  the  church.  If  the  Anglican 
revival  has  sublimed  and  softened  and  enriched  our 
worship,  it  has  also  narrowed  and  hardened  and 
impoverished  our  religion.  Sensuous  excellence  may 
be  the  most  serious  of  spiritual  defects  ;  and  a 
political  system  which  suppresses  or  misconceives 
essential  elements  in  the  religious  ideal  wants  the 
most  distinctive  note  of  truth. 

§  VI.   How  the  Ideal  is  to  be  Realized 

I.  We  return  then  to  our  fundamental  principle  : 
The  churches  exist  for  the  religion,  and  ought  to  be 
as  it  is,  agencies  and  institutions  for  its  realization, 
good  only  as  adapted  to  this  end.  The  character  of 
a  religion  is  determined  by  its  idea  of  God  ;  the 
constitution,  action,  and  ambitions  of  a  church  are 
determined  by  its  ideal  of  religion.  To  be  unfaithful 
to  any  element  in  the  latter  is  to  be  without  the 
highest  kind  of  catholicity,  catholicity  as  regards  the 
truth.  The  glory  of  the  Christian  religion  is  its 
conception  of  God.  He  is  the  common  Father  and 
Sovereign,  benevolent  and  beneficent,  gracious  yet 
righteous.  He  loves  all  men,  and  wills  their  good  ; 
hates  sin  and  contends  against  it  with  all  His 
energies.  He  finds  His  highest  beatitude  in  the 
happiness  of  the  creature,  but  makes  holiness  the 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  4 1 

condition  of  happiness.  To  create  holiness  that 
happiness  may  be  realized,  is  the  aim  of  the  divine 
moral  government ;  in  making  for  righteousness  it 
makes  for  the  highest  good  of  the  universe.  But 
the  religion  that  articulates  this  conception  must 
be  as  if  it  were  the  moral  forces  of  mankind 
organized  and  inspired  of  God,  for  the  creation 
of  holy  happiness  and  happy  holiness.  And  the 
churches  that  interpret  the  religion  must  have 
this  as  their  supreme  end,  the  regnant  idea  that 
determines  the  range  and  modes  of  their  activities. 
No  element  or  province  of  good  can  be  alien  to 
them  ;  whatever  tends  to  bring  in  a  more  perfect 
order  is  their  proper  work,  whatever  tends  to  delay 
or  defeat  its  coming  is  their  proper  enemy.  They 
are  associations  for  worship  :  for  the  societies  that  are 
to  carry  out  God's  purposes  must  depend  on  Him 
and  stand  with  Him  in  living  fellowship  and  sym- 
pathy. But  their  worship  is  only  a  means,  not  an 
end ;  it  is  meant  to  create  a  gentler  and  more 
reverent  spirit,  a  holier  passion  of  benevolence,  a 
more  exalted  moral  enthusiasm,  not  simply  to  soothe 
and  satisfy  the  soul.  They  are  homes  of  instruction  : 
for  men  must  be  informed  of  the  truth  if  they  are  to 
be  formed  by  it.  But  the  instruction  is  in  order  to 
better  living,  to  nobler  and  more  efficient  action  in 
the  way  of  Christ  and  for  the  ends  of  His  kingdom. 
In  Him  all  the  churches  find  their  ideal  religious 
person  ;  to  create  Christlike  men  and  to  realize  in 
society  an  order  and  law  worthy  of  Him,  is  their 


42 


CA  THOLICISM 


mission.  To  fulfil  it  they  must  work  as  He  worked, 
by  love,  by  gentleness,  by  speaking  the  truth,  by 
creating  a  manhood  that  praises  God  and  a  brother- 
hood that  rejoices  man  ;  by  bearing  the  sins  and 
carrying  the  sorrows  of  men  till  the  life  of  sorrow 
and  the  being  of  sin  shall  cease  ;  by  unweariedness  in 
well-doing  increasing  the  number  of  good  men  and 
the  quality  of  their  goodness,  so  making  earth  in 
an  ever  brighter  degree  the  home  of  a  redeemed 
humanity.  Churches  that  do  not  work  for  these  ends 
are  not  churches  of  Christ's  religion  ;  those  that  work 
for  them  by  fittest  means,  and  so  to  best  issues,  are 
the  most  Christian  of  churches. 

The  range  thus  opened  up  to  the  activity  of  the 
churches  is  immense ;  it  is  co-extensive  with  the 
needs  of  society  and  man.  Their  primary  duty  is  to 
the  individual  ;  with  him  they  must  begin.  Good 
persons  are  the  most  efficient  factors  of  good  ;  what 
makes  the  most  good  men  does  the  most  good  to 
man.  Now,  religion  has  in  a  unique  degree  the 
power  of  conversion  ;  we  may  say,  indeed,  it  is  the 
sole  possessor  of  this  power.  Any  great  ambition  or 
affection  may  exalt,  or  even  in  a  sense  purify,  a  man  ; 
but  a  man  must  have  a  certain  largeness  and  eleva- 
tion of  nature  before  he  can  feel  it.  Love  of  art  or 
science,  literary,  political  and  other  ambition,  may 
persuade  a  man  to  live  both  purely  and  laboriously ; 
but  the  nature  to  which  they  appeal  must  be  already 
a  noble  nature.  The  arts  and  sciences  do  not  so 
much  elevate  man  as  witness  to  his  elevation.  But 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  43 


religion  has  an  altogether  peculiar  power  :  it  can 
touch  the  bad  man,  find  the  good  in  him,  so  possess 
as  to  transform  his  nature,  making  him  in  all  things 
the  servant  of  righteousness.  Now,  this  power  the 
churches  ought  to  labour  to  exercise  in  the  highest 
possible  degree.  They  ought  to  burn  with  a  passion 
for  souls,  be  consumed  with  the  desire  to  save.  This 
does  not  mean  the  ambition  for  numbers,  but  the 
enthusiasm  for  the  religious  change  which  is  a  moral 
regeneration.  To  the  extent  that  a  profession  of 
religion  does  not  carry  with  it  purity,  chastity,  truth 
— in  a  word,  integrity  of  moral  nature — it  is  an  evil 
and  not  a  good.  The  churches  must  bring  together 
faith  and  conduct,  translate  the  ideal  of  their  Master 
into  the  living  of  their  disciples,  if  they  are  to  live  to 
purpose  and  grow  in  power. 

2.  This,  then,  is  their  primary  duty — to  save  men  ; 
but  their  first  is  not  their  last.  Saved  men  are 
means,  not  ends ;  they  are  saved  that  they  may  save, 
i.e.  work  out  the  moral  regeneration  of  the  race. 
The  churches  that  convert  most  men,  and  best  use 
the  men  they  have  converted,  realize  religion  in  the 
most  efficient  way.  It  is  the  work  of  these  men, 
instructed  and  inspired  by  their  churches,  to  carry 
their  high  principles  everywhere  and  into  everything. 
They  are  not  to  conserve  the  actual,  but  to  create 
the  ideal,  to  labour  along  all  lines  that  promise  the 
amelioration  of  the  human  lot.  They  may  think  the 
world  bad,  but  it  is  capable  of  being  mended,  and  to 
mend  it  is  the  very  reason  of  their  being.  The 


44 


CA  THOLICISM 


churches  ought  to  be  the  mothers  of  strenuous 
philanthropists,  encouraging  their  sons  to  labour 
among  the  men  who  make  crime,  and  against  the 
conditions  that  make  criminals  ;  in  the  hospitals 
where  the  diseased  are  tended,  and  against  the  slums 
where  they  are  bred  ;  in  the  charities  where  the  poor 
are  helped,  and  against  the  poverty  and  the  causes  of 
the  poverty  that  make  the  chanties  necessary.  They 
ought  to  be  the  teachers  of  statesmen,  and  demand 
that  the  nation,  in  all  its  legislation  and  in  all  its 
conduct,  home  or  foreign,  shall  follow  the  righteous- 
ness that  alone  exalteth,  recognizing  no  law  as  good, 
no  action  as  honourable,  that  denies  or  offends 
Christian  principle.  They  ought  to  be  the  weightiest 
preachers  of  economic  doctrine,  building  on  the 
principles  of  Christian  brotherhood  and  equity  an 
ideal  industrial  society,  where  all  should  work  and 
all  work  be  honoured  ;  where  wealth,  without  any 
schemes  of  violent  and  wrongful  division,  should  by 
the  action  of  moral  laws  through  moral  men  be  so 
distributed  as  to  create  a  State  where  poverty  was 
unknown  and  charity  was  unneeded.  They  ought, 
too,  to  be  the  great  mothers  and  guardians  of  social 
purity,  fearing  not  to  rebuke  the  sins  of  class  and 
caste,  of  idleness  and  luxury,  bending  their  energies 
to  the  creation  of  a  loftier  ideal  of  manhood  and 
womanhood,  a  chivalrous  chastity  of  thought  and 
conduct  that  should,  were  it  only  by  the  courage  of 
innocence,  rebuke  or  shame  into  silence  the  lower 
passions  and  lusts.    Were  the  churches  to  forget  all 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  45 


their  sectional  jealousies  in  the  grand  remembrance 
of  their  high  mission  to  further  the  common  good, 
were  they  to  lose  the  mean  political  and  sacerdotal 
ambitions  that  have  narrowed  and  materialized  the 
prouder  and  more  historic  of  them,  in  a  sublime 
moral  enthusiasm  for  the  realization  of  the  religious 
ideal,  they  would  become  possessed  of  a  power  which 
could  be  described  only  as  a  baptism  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  and  of  fire.  The  paralysis  of  the  churches  in 
the  religious  sphere  is  due  to  the  narrowness  of  their 
spirit  and  aims.  They  have  been  contented  with  too 
little  ;  they  need  to  make  a  reality  of  their  faith  and 
its  laws  for  the  whole  life  of  society  and  man. 

It  need  not  be  said  that  this  is  not  meant  to  be  a 
plea  for  an  extension  of  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  ; 
on  the  contrary,  that  would  seem  to  me  a  simple 
calamity.  Nor  is  there  any  argument  on  behalf  of 
the  supremacy  of  the  church  over  the  civil  courts  in 
matters  ecclesiastical ;  on  the  contrary,  these  judicial 
conflicts  but  show  to  me  the  disastrous  depravation 
of  our  idea  of  religion.  There  is  nothing  that  has  so 
hindered  the  supremacy  of  religion  as  the  struggle 
for  ecclesiastical  supremacy.  The  ecclesiastic  is  not 
made  by  his  function  a  religious  man ;  his  position 
rather  makes  him  but  a  statesman  of  narrower 
interests,  with  ambitions  circumscribed  by  the  limits 
of  his  society.  To  allow  ecclesiastics  to  rule  the 
nation  is,  as  history  has  so  often  calamitously  proved, 
but  to  sacrifice  the  people  to  a  class.  That  is  the 
best  civil  polity  which  secures  at  once  perfect  order 


46 


CA  THOLICISM 


and  perfect  freedom,  the  highest  happiness  and  the 
most  happiness  to  its  people  ;  and  that  is  the  best 
ecclesiastical  polity  which  develops,  exercises  and 
organizes  to  the  highest  degree,  in  the  wisest  ways, 
and  for  most  beneficent  ends,  the  moral  and  spiritual 
energies  of  the  religion  and  of  the  religious.  And  so 
what  is  here  pleaded  for  is  the  sovereignty  of  religion, 
the  reign  through  the  reason  over  the  conscience  of 
the  beliefs,  truths,  ideas  that  constitute  it.  What  is 
needed  to  this  reign  is  a  teacher  who  can  interpret  the 
meaning  of  a  God  who  is  a  moral  Sovereign,  for  the 
whole  nature,  the  whole  life,  and  the  whole  duty  of 
man.  Such  a  teacher  the  churches  ought  to  be  :  but 
to  be  it  they  must  be  in  Novalis'  phrase,  here  used 
in  all  reverence,  Gottgetrtinkene,  possessed  by  an  un- 
resting and  inextinguishable  passion  for  His  moral 
ends,  for  the  creation  of  an  order  that  shall  in  its 
measure  fitly  express  or  reflect  His  eternal  ideal. 
Within  the  Christian  conception  of  God  there  lies  for 
the  Christian  religion  a  world  of  unexhausted  possi- 
bilities. Only  when  it  has  been  fully  construed  will 
theology  be  perfected,  only  when  it  has  been  so 
applied  as  to  order  and  regulate  the  life,  individual 
and  collective,  will  religion  be  realized.  Once  this 
idea  has  become  the  inspiration  of  the  church,  it  will 
look  back  with  shame  on  the  days  of  the  old  eccle- 
siasticism  when  it  lived  in  bondage  to  the  letter;  and 
it  will  contrast,  in  large  joyfulness,  the  freedom  that 
allows  its  people  to  build  by  spiritual  methods  and 
through  moral  agencies  "  the  City  of  the  living  God," 


THE  CHURCHES  AND  THE  IDEAL  OF  RELIGION  47 


with  the  liberty  they  knew  and  loved  of  old,  the 
liberty  of  so  manipulating  the  past  as  to  make  it 
approve  the  present.    Then  working,  not  under  the 
belittling  burden  of  an  exhausted  yet  authoritative 
past,  but  for  the  future  and  under  the  inspiration 
of  the  sublimest  of  all  ideals,  they  will  become  fit 
vehicles   for  the  religion  that  alone  possesses  the 
secret  for  promoting  without  cessation  human  pro- 
gress and  human  good.    The  abstractions  of  Posi- 
tivism are  potent  and  significant  only  to  the  studious 
enthusiast ;  but  the  moral  energies  of  religion  are  for 
all  men  engines  of  mightiest  dynamic  power.  They 
enlarge  the  individual  life  with  universal  ideals  ;  they 
lift  time   into   the  stream  of  an  eternal  purpose 
and  fill  it  with  eternal  issues  ;  and  they  make  the 
simplest  moral  act  great  as  a  real  factor  in  the 
evolution  of  a  higher  order  and  an  immortal  character. 
To  the  imagination  that  has  been  touched  by  the 
real  ideal  of  religion,  the  fervid  prophesyings  of  our 
modern  Agnostics  and  Positivists  are  but  the  tamest 
and  earthliest  of  dreams. 

March,  1884. 


II 


CATHOLICISM  AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR 
THE  FAITH 

§  I.  The  Question  to  be  Discussed 

IF  the  highest  function  of  the  Christian  church 
be  so  to  interpret  the  Christian  faith  as  to 
secure  the  progressive  realization  of  the  Christian 
religion,  then  it  becomes  a  question  of  the  most 
vital  interest : — Has  any  one  of  the  many  bodies 
claiming  the  name  of  church  proved  itself  to  be 
supremely  efficient  in  the  exposition  and  vindication 
of  the  faith  ?  On  this  point  there  may  be  many 
differences  of  opinion,  but  as  to  one  thing  there 
can  be  no  doubt ;  of  all  the  churches  in  Christendom 
the  Roman  Catholic  is,  in  all  matters  or  questions 
affecting  the  faith,  the  most  conscious  of  her  own 
sufficiency.  She  has  proclaimed  it  in  every  possible 
form,  has  decreed  herself  infallible,  had  tried  to  live 
up  to  her  decree  even  before  she  had  formally 
passed  it,  and  has  proudly  moved  among  the  churches, 
challenging  them  to  submit  to  claims  they  cannot 
surpass  and  dare  not  attempt  to  rival.  We  assume, 
of  course,  the  sincerity  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
church,  and   her  honest  belief  in   this  the  most 

48 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  49 


stupendous  of  all  claims  ever  made  by  any  society, 
especially  a  society  which  at  once  addresses  the 
reason  and  stands  at  the  judgment  seat  of  history  ; 
and  we  proceed  to  inquire  whether  her  behaviour 
as  she  lives  in  our  midst  at  all  corresponds  to  her 
claims.  In  other  words,  our  question  is,  To  what 
extent  has  the  Catholic  movement  in  England  helped 
the  English  mind  to  a  higher  and  more  satisfactory 
doctrine  of  religion  than  could  have  been  found 
outside  or  apart  from  it  ?  To  what  degree  has  it, 
in  an  age,  if  not  of  denial,  yet  of  transition  and 
the  inquiry  which  leans  to  doubt,  contributed  at 
once  to  conserve  and  quicken  the  Christian  faith  ; 
to  make  it  credible  to  living  minds,  real  to  the  men 
who  feel  that  their  religious  beliefs  are  the  dearest 
to  the  heart,  but  the  hardest  to  the  intellect,  and 
the  least  practical  or  relevant  to  the  life?  These 
are  questions  it  is  easy  to  ask,  but  very  difficult  to 
discuss  judicially  or  even  judiciously  ;  while  the  most 
difficult  thing  of  all  is  to  find  a  just  and  sufficient 
answer.  Underneath  all  such  questions  others  still 
more  fundamental  lie,  and  the  principles  implied 
in  the  deeper  must  always  regulate  the  criticism 
and  determination  of  the  more  superficial.  The 
writer  is  clearly  conscious  that  his  attitude  to  religion 
and  our  religious  problems  is  one,  and  the  attitude 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  another  and  very  different ; 
and  it  would  be  simple  impertinence  in  him  to  ignore 
the  difference,  or  enforce  his  own  canons  of  criticism 
on  the  Catholic   mind.     He  does  not  mean  to 

4 


50 


CA  THOLICISM 


judge  those  who  have  found  refuge  and  peace  in 
Catholicism — indeed,  he  would  not  do  so  if  he  could. 
If  it  has  made  its  converts  happier  and  better  men, 
it  has  done  a  work  for  which  all  good  men  ought 
to  be  grateful.  But  the  question  that  now  concerns 
us  in  no  way  relates  to  the  sufficiency  of  Catholicism 
for  Catholics,  but  to  the  adequacy  and  relevance 
of  what  may  be  termed  its  special  apologetic  to 
the  spirits  possessed  and  oppressed  by  the  problems 
of  the  time.  The  power  of  Catholicism  to  satisfy 
convinced  religious  men  in  search  of  the  best 
organized  and  most  authoritative  Christianity,  is  one 
thing  ;  and  its  ability  to  answer  the  questions  and 
win  the  faith  of  the  perplexed  and  critical  mind, 
is  another  thing  altogether.  This  is  a  matter  we 
are  all  free  to  discuss,  nay,  every  man  concerned 
for  the  future  of  faith  is  bound  to  discuss  it ;  and 
the  frankest  will  always  be  the  fairest  discussion. 

Of  course,  it  may  be  said,  and  said  quite  truly, 
that  the  infallibility  of  the  Roman  church  does  not 
guarantee  the  infallibility  of  her  ministers,  doctors, 
or  divines,  or  even  the  moral  integrity  and  intel- 
lectual sufficiency  of  every  movement  that  may  be 
described  as  Catholic.  This  may  at  once  be  granted, 
but  it  only  reduces  the  significance  and  impairs  the 
competence  of  the  infallibility  which  can  render  so 
little  service  to  those  who  most  need  it.  We  shall 
meet  this  question  again,  and  for  the  present  confine 
ourselves  to  the  problem: — How  far  have  thinkers 
and  teachers  who  have  been  either  the  ordained  and 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH         5 1 

recognized  ministers  of  an  infallible  church,  or  the 
unauthorized  exponents  of  her  faith,  supplied  living 
thought  with  a  cogent  and  relevant  apologetic  for 
religion  ? 

§11.  The  Need  of  a  Relevant  Apology  for  the  Faith 

I.  In  order  to  an  intelligent  discussion  of  this 
question,  it  may  be  as  well  to  explain  what  is 
here  meant  by  a  relevant  apologetic.  It  means  not 
a  mere  defence  of  the  faith,  a  marshalling  of 
evidences,  a  method  or  process  of  proof,  but  such 
a  constructive  interpretation  and  presentation  of 
Religion  as  shall  make  it  stand  before  the  living 
reason  as  a  coherent  and  intelligible  thing.  Evi- 
dences may  admit  of  no  answer,  and  yet  produce 
no  conviction  :  if  the  things  they  are  meant  to  prove 
have  no  reality  or  adequate  meaning  to  thought, 
no  concrete  rationality  for  reason,  they  may  be 
multiplied  to  almost  any  extent  without  gathering 
weight  or  begetting  belief.  Men  lose  faith  in  re- 
ligious truth  not  so  much  through  a  failure  in  its 
evidences  as  through  a  failure  in  its  relevance  ;  in 
other  words,  the  terms  in  which  it  has  been  inter- 
preted cease  to  be  credible  either  by  ceasing  to  be 
intelligible  or  by  falling  out  of  harmony  with  the 
logical  basis  and  methods  of  living  mind.  Of  course 
it  may  not  seem  fair  to  illustrate  a  point  by  the 
words  of  one  who  is  but  an  echo  of  other  minds  ; 
but  the  reflection  in  a  mirror  often  reveals  more  of 
the  original  than  may  be  discovered  by  the  searching 


CA  THOLICISM 


scrutiny  of  the  naked  eye.     Well,  Mr.  Lilly — and 
the  remark  summarizes  a  wonderful  deal  of  Catholic 
argumentation — meets  some  very  grave  objections 
to  Christianity  by  saying,  "  in  the  light  of  reason, 
man  has  in  strictness  no  rights  against  God." 1  Now 
that  is  not  an  answer,  but  a  confession  that  no 
answer  can  be  given.    It  means  that  if  there  were 
a  sovereign  being  against  whom  man  had  rights, 
that  being  would,  in  the  given  circumstances,  be  in 
the  wrong.    And  such  a  defence  is  the  worst  indict- 
ment of  Providence.   Looked  at  in  the  clear  light  of 
reason,  man  has  rights  against  God.    To  be  made,  is 
to  be  invested  with  rights  ;  to  create,  is  for  the  creator 
to  assume  duties.   I  do  not  like  such  modes  of  speech, 
but  an  argument  like  Mr.  Lilly's  compels  their  use. 
I  prefer  to  say  that  God's  ways  towards  men  are 
regulated,  not  by  what  He  owes  to  men,  but  by  what 
He  owes  to  Himself.    But  so  to  conceive  the  matter 
is  to  affirm,  if  not  "  man's  rights  against  God,"  yet 
God's  high  duties  towards  man — which  means  here, 
that  the  justification  of  God's  ways  must  proceed 
on  a  far  loftier  and  truer  principle  than  either  the 
denial  or  the  affirmation  of  the  creature's  rights, 
viz.,  on  the  principle  that  the  Divine  nature  is  a 
law  to  the   Divine  will,  and    that  that  nature  is 
perfect  reason,  righteousness  and  love. 

A  relevant  apologetic,  then,  may  be  described  as 
one  which,  by  the  use  of  rational  principles  and 
methods,  satisfies    the    reason    as   to    the  truth 


1  Ancient  Religion  and  Modem  Thought,  p.  261. 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  53 


of  things  it  had  doubted  or  even  denied,  and  which 
addresses  it  as  if  it  were  honest  and  reasoned  honestly 
concerning  their  truth  and  were  constantly  in  search  of 
it.  Now  every  age  has  its  own  mental  habits,  which 
imply  common  principles,  fixed  processes  of  inquiry 
and  proof,  and  modes  of  apprehending  and  handling 
questions  ;  and  these  affect  man's  attitude  to  every 
matter  of  thought  and  belief.  An  idea  like  evolution, 
for  example,  changes,  not  only  our  notion  of  the  mode 
in  which  nature  does  her  work,  but  also  the  way  in 
which  we  study  alike  her  works  and  her  manner  of 
working,  the  methods  by  which  we  inquire  into  the 
phenomena  of  life,  the  order  and  facts  of  history, 
the  appearance  and  meaning  of  man.  It  causes, 
in  a  word,  such  a  revolution  in  our  basal  conceptions 
as  to  demand,  in  order  to  mental  wholeness  and 
harmony,  that  they  and  their  related  beliefs  be  re- 
stated or  reformulated.  In  a  period  of  transition 
faith  is  difficult,  because  religious  ideas  at  once  resist 
formal  change  and  seem  to  suffer  more  from  it  than 
empirical  or  scientific  ;  and  men  hastily  or  fearfully 
conclude  that  the  change  which  is  glorifying  science 
will  abolish  religion.  On  the  one  side  it  stands, 
by  its  theistic  idea,  so  related  to  nature  as  to  feel 
every  variation  in  men's  notions  concerning  the 
creative  cause,  method,  purpose  or  tendency ;  and, 
on  the  other  side,  it  is  by  its  beliefs,  institutions, 
and  life,  so  related  to  history  as  to  be  sensitive  to 
every  new  historical  doctrine,  discovery,  or  process 
of  inquiry.      Hence,  when   the   cosmic  idea  has 


54  CATHOLICISM 

changed  its  form,  while  the  religious  has  not,  when 
a  new  conception  reigns  in  every  department  of 
history  save  the  religious,  the  chronic  difficulties 
between  Science  and  Religion  become  to  many 
minds  insurmountable,  and  they  cease  to  believe 
simply  because  Religion  has  ceased  to  be  intellectu- 
ally relevant — i.e.,  to  belong  to  the  living  and  grow- 
ing body  of  truth,  which  at  once  possesses  and 
inspires  living  mind.  Men  so  situated  are  men 
whom  no  mustering  of  conventional  evidences  can 
convince  ;  to  reach  or  even  touch  them,  apologetic 
thought  must  seek  to  construe  Religion  as  scientific 
thought  has  construed  nature  and  history.  What 
can  make  men  feel  at  harmony  with  themselves  and 
their  universe,  will  always  be  the  system  most  open 
to  successful  proof;  what  cannot  accomplish  this, 
no  mass  of  probable  or  other  evidence  will  save 
from  ultimate  disbelief. 

It  would  lead  us  much  too  far  to  illustrate,  with 
all  the  needed  detail,  the  principles  now  stated  ; 
but  two  works  will  show  what  is  meant.  The  De 
Civitate  Dei  is  perhaps  the  greatest  work  in  the 
whole  region  of  Christian  apologetics.  Yet  its  form 
and  argument  were  determined  by  the  conditions 
and  questions  of  Augustine's  own  day  ;  these  must 
be  understood  before  its  significance  and  force  can 
be  felt.  The  ideas  of  the  time,  heathen  and 
Christian,  political,  social,  philosophical,  religious, 
its  conflicts,  fears,  hopes,  despairs,  must  be  recalled. 
The  student  must  fill  his  imagination  with  the  Roman 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  55 


ideal  of  the  Eternal  City ;  he  must  realize  what 
may  be  described  as  its  apotheosis  by  the  Latin 
peoples,  the  degree  in  which  it  was  a  city  at  once 
sacred  and  imperial,  venerable,  august,  invincible, 
queen  for  centuries  of  civilized  man,  sole  mother  of 
the  law  that  ruled  him  and  the  order  he  loved 
invested  with  a  more  awful  sanctity  than  any  re- 
ligious city  ;  nay,  as  the  embodiment  of  the  Roman, 
the  symbol  of  a  universal,  religion,  and  of  one  that 
out  of  ceaseless  war  had  called  universal  peace. 
Once  he  has  made  this  worship  of  Rome  live  in  his 
consciousness,  he  must  conceive  the  consternation, 
the  horror  and  shame,  that  must  have  seized  the 
Romans  when  they  saw  their  city  stormed  and 
plundered  by  the  barbarians,  and  the  consequent 
indignation  and  hate  which  broke  out  in  the  Pagan 
charge : — ■"  This  ruin  is  but  the  last  and  highest 
achievement  of  the  new  religion ! "  Augustine's 
apology  was  the  answer  to  this  passion,  and  to  the 
belief  by  which  it  lived  ;  and  the  answer  was  as 
splendid  as  complete.  The  new  religion  was  con- 
ceived and  represented  as  a  new  city,  a  diviner  and 
more  eternal  Rome,  which  transcended  the  old  as 
heaven  transcends  the  earth  ;  which  came  not  from 
a  people,  but  from  God  ;  which  was  created  not  of 
human  ambition  and  hate,  but  of  divine  grace  and 
love ;  which  comprehended  not  a  few  nations,  but  the 
race  ;  which  produced  no  evil,  and  fostered  no  wrong, 
but  formed  all  the  virtues  and  embraced  all  truth, — a 
city  destined  to  growth,  but  not  to  decay,  whose 


56 


CATHOLICISM 


building  might  indeed  proceed  in  time,  but  whose  con- 
tinuance was  to  be  unto  eternity.  Beside  the  Civitas 
Dei  the  Civitas  Romana  was  made  to  seem  a  feverish 
and  shadowy  and  inglorious  dream  ;  the  ideal  of  the 
celestial  rebuked  by  its  very  divineness  the  poor 
reality  of  the  earthly  city.  The  power  of  the  apology 
lay  in  its  being  a  constructive  presentation  of  the 
Christian  religion  in  a  form  relevant  to  the  men 
and  the  moment ;  their  knowledge  of  the  city  that 
was  perishing  constituted  the  very  capability  to 
which  Augustine  appealed.  And  so  accurately  does 
his  work  in  its  method  and  argument  reflect  the 
spirit  and  ideals,  the  disillusionment  and  alarms  of 
the  times,  that  the  man  who  does  not  live  through 
them  and  in  them  will  never  see  its  meaning  or 
feel  its  power. 

Take,  again,  Butler's  Analogy.  It  was  a  most 
relevant  book ;  its  relevance  was  the  secret  of  its 
strength,  and  is  the  secret  of  its  weakness.  On  its 
every  page,  in  its  every  paragraph,  we  hear  the 
controversies  of  the  time  ;  the  freethinker,  the  deist, 
the  air)'  rationalist,  who  will  have  a  religion  without 
mystery  and  without  miracle,  appear  and  deploy 
their  arguments  ;  but  only  that  they  may  be  judicially 
analyzed,  reduced  to  their  true  insignificance,  and 
finally  translated  into  proofs  tending  to  justify  faith 
in  the  revealed  religion  they  had  been  used  to 
condemn.  Some  things  Butler  did  once  for  all. 
His  method  ;  his  doctrine  of  nature  and  man  ;  his 
proof  of  the  religious  worth  and  work  of  conscience  ; 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR   THE  FAITH  57 


his  demonstration  that  religion  when  most  accom- 
modated to  the  standard  of  a  conventional  and 
unimaginative  rationalism,  becomes  only  the  less 
reasonable,  beset  with  graver  and  more  insoluble 
difficulties ;  the  way  he  used  the  facts  of  life  to 
illustrate  and  verify  certain  truths  of  faith,  like  the 
doctrines  of  substitution  and  atonement, — are  now 
inalienable  possessions  of  constructive  Christian 
thought.  Yet  the  strength  of  his  argument,  taken 
as  a  whole,  was  due  to  the  use  of  principles  common 
to  the  belief  and  unbelief  of  the  day.  Grant  those 
principles,  and  the  Analogy  is  one  of  the  most 
marvellous  structures  of  solid,  cumulative,  convincing 
argumentation  ever  built  by  the  mind  of  man  ;  deny 
those  principles,  and  while  the  work  remains  a 
monument  of  dialectical  genius,  it  has  lost  its  power 
to  convince.  And  they  are  explicitly  denied  by 
systems  that  now  confront  us  ;  the  unbelief  of  our 
day  is  more  radical  than  the  unbelief  of  Butler's  ; 
and,  in  some  degree,  we  have  to  thank  him  for  its 
being  so.  He  showed  it  the  necessity  of  increasing 
its  negations  if  it  was  to  remain  negative  at  all. 
Hence  our  living  apologetic  must  begin  without  any 
help  from  those  common  principles  which  were 
the  basis  of  Butler's  work  ;  it  must  get  even  nearer 
the  rock,  seek  a  stronger  and  broader  foundation, 
if  it  would  construct  an  argument  as  relevant  to 
our  day  as  the  A?ialogy  was  to  his.  And  whatever 
it  does,  it  must  not  seek  to  relieve  the  difficulties  of 
revealed  religion  by  deepening  those  that  sit  upon  the 


58 


CATHOLICISM 


face  of  nature ;  rather  it  must  illumine  and  trans- 
figure the  darkness  of  nature  by  the  light  of 
revelation.  Religion  has  need  to  penetrate  and 
exalt  both  nature  and  man  with  her  own  trans- 
cendental ideals,  that  men  may  have  a  new  sense 
of  the  value  of  life,  and  win  a  new  heart  for  braver 
and  nobler  living. 

2.  But  now  there  is  another  point  that  must 
be  emphasized  : — the  need  for  constructive  religious 
thought  does  not  so  much  arise  from  the  specu- 
lations and  criticisms  of  a  few  active  intellects 
without  the  churches,  as  from  a  common  intellectual 
tendency  or  drift  which  causes  a  shaking  and 
unrest,  a  sense  of  insecurity  and  change,  within 
them.  This  is  what  tempts  men  either  to  break 
with  the  old  beliefs,  or  to  doubt  them,  or  to  demand 
that  they  shall  be  clothed  in  new  forms  or  that 
from  the  old  forms  a  new  spirit  shall  come  forth. 
The  churches  are  now  face  to  face  with  the  gravest 
questions  that  have  confronted  Christianity  since  her 
life  began  ;  questions  not  simply  doctrinal,  political, 
or  social,  but  fundamental  and  final, — whether  men 
are  to  be  Christians  any  more,  or  even  in  any 
tolerable  sense  theists.  These  questions  exhale,  as 
it  were,  the  intellectual  difficulties  which  diffuse 
themselves  everywhere,  stealing  into  the  best  dis- 
ciplined homes,  penetrating  the  most  rigorously 
organized  and  jealously  guarded  churches,  pervading 
the  atmosphere  in  which  thought  lives  and  breathes, 
touching  our  finest  spirits  with  the  slow  paralysis 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  59 


of  doubt,  or  the  hesitancy  which  is  the  death  of 
all  enthusiasm.  The  men  have  not  created  the 
difficulties  or  raised  the  doubts ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  doubts  and  difficulties  have  sought  and  found 
the  men ;  they  are  creations  of  the  time,  and  spring 
from  the  characteristics  and  achievements  of  its 
thought,  its  wider  knowledge,  its  vaster  outlook, 
its  new  methods  of  interpreting  nature  and  history, 
its  deeper  insight  into  the  way  of  nature's  working, 
and  into  the  affinities  of  man  and  his  universe. 
They  are  utterly  misunderstood  when  traced  to  an 
evil  heart  of  unbelief,  or  to  some  taint  or  sin  of 
will,  or  to  any  other  source  than  honesty  and  integrity 
of  intellect, — the  determination  to  be  as  clear  and 
scrupulous  in  the  realm  of  spirit  and  faith  as  in 
the  region  of  experience  and  experiment.  Scientists 
who  have  studied  nature  and  become  so  possessed 
by  the  ideas  of  law  and  energy,  continuity  and 
development,  as  to  feel  unable  to  reconcile  them 
with  their  older  ideas  of  God  and  His  creative 
method,  are  men  whom  the  churches  are  bound  to 
help  to  a  solution.  Scholars  trained  in  the  newest 
critical  methods,  literary  and  historical,  cannot  forget 
them  when  they  turn  to  the  study  of  the  Bible, 
and  of  Hebrew  and  Christian  history ;  and  cannot 
pursue  them  in  these  fields  without  raising  questions 
they  have  a  right  to  submit  to  the  churches,  and  to 
require  the  churches  frankly  and  honestly  to  answer. 
Mr.  Lilly's  vindication  of  the  attitude  of  his  church 
to  the  "  higher  criticism  "  seems  to  me  her  severest 


6o 


CA  THOLICISM 


condemnation.  She  is  to  "  wait  until  the  higher 
criticism "  has  really  established  something  certain, 
and  then  she  will  consider  how  far  the  "  traditional 
thesis "  taught  in  her  schools  should  be  modified 
in  consequence.1  There  is  here  the  abdication 
of  the  highest  functions  of  the  church ;  she  ceases 
to  be  the  teacher  of  truth,  and  leaves  it  to  men, 
whom  she  bans  the  while,  to  be  its  discoverers ; 
and  then  the  truths  they  have  with  pain  discovered 
and  with  loss  established  she  will  reconcile  to  her 
tradition.  In  harmony  with  this,  he — with  special 
reference  to  the  question,  what  would  happen  to  a 
Catholic  priest  who  should  teach  his  people  certain 
critical  conclusions,  some  of  them  conclusions  certain 
enough — says,  such  a  one  "  would  richly  deserve 
suspension,"  for  "  his  business  is  to  watch  for  men's 
souls,  not  to  unsettle  their  faith."  2  But  his  business 
ought  to  be  to  teach  the  truth  ;  and  if  in  the  process 
faith  is  unsettled,  it  will  only  be  to  the  greater 
saving  of  the  soul.  The  primary  right  of  every  man 
is  to  the  truth,  and  the  best  truth  his  teachers 
can  give  him ;  the  primary  duty  of  the  teacher, 
especially  of  the  collective  teacher  called  the  church, 
is  to  communicate  the  truth,  not  speaking  with 
authority  or  certainty  where  certainty  is  not.  A 
church  that  is  true  and  the  infallible  teacher  of 
truth  and  guardian  of  souls,  can  in  no  way  so 
well  justify  its  claim  and  its  being  as  by  teaching 


1  Ancient  Religion  and  Modern  Thought,  p.  279.    -Ib.,  p.  278. 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  6 1 


the  truth  to  souls  perplexed.  These  souls  are  seeking 
the  truth,  and  would  be  saved  by  it ;  but  they 
are  simply  mocked  if  a  church  says  to  them,  "  Find 
out  for  yourself  without  any  help  from  me  the 
truth  on  those  critical  and  historical  questions  which 
are  matters  of  life  and  death  for  you,  and,  to  speak 
honestly,  for  myself  also  ;  and  then  I  will  tell  you 
how  this  truth  is  to  be  reconciled  with  my  'tra- 
ditional thesis.'"  It  would  hardly  be  possible  to 
conceive  a  more  helpless  or  ignoble  attitude  on 
the  part  of  man  or  church.  For  the  men  whose 
doubts  come  from  brave  thought  and  honest  inquiry 
have  the  highest  claim  on  the  best  consideration 
and  clearest  light  of  all  the  churches  and  all  their 
thinkers.  Doubt  never  appears  without  reason ; 
and  the  removal  of  the  reason  is  the  only  real 
way  to  the  removal  of  the  doubt.  The  churches 
that  do  nothing  to  reach  and  purify  the  source 
only  help  to  muddle  the  stream. 

§  III.  Deism  and  Apologetics  in  Catholic  France  and 
in  Protestant  England 

I.  Constructive  apologetic  is  thus  at  once  the 
highest  work  of  living  religious  thought,  and  the 
common  duty  of  all  the  churches.  In  it  the  Roman 
Catholic  must  bear  its  part.  It  is  too  wise  to  trust 
here  to  its  infallible  authority,  matchless  organization, 
rigorous  discipline,  and  jealously  guarded  education  ; 
indeed,  experience  has  thoroughly  well  taught  it 
how  little  these  are  able  to  keep  down  the  critical 


62 


CATHOLICISM 


and  sceptical  spirit  among  its  laity,  or  even,  as 
certain  cases  have  flagrantly  proved,  to  keep  it 
out  from  the  ranks  of  its  clergy.  It  is  but  natural 
that  the  church  which  most  taxes  faith  should 
most  provoke  unbelief;  but  it  ought  not  to  follow 
that  the  claims  that  most  challenge  criticism  are 
claims  that  can  as  little  recognize  as  bear  the 
criticism  they  challenge.  It  is  the  simple  and 
sober  truth  to  say  that  no  church  has  begotten 
so  much  doubt  and  disbelief  as  the  church  of 
Rome.  And  she  has  begotten  it,  not  by  the 
demand  she  makes  on  faith,  but  by  her  inability 
to  justify  the  demand.  History  bears  here  an  in- 
dubitable and  incorruptible  witness.  Of  the  Middle 
Ages  we  need  not  speak  ;  or  of  the  Renaissance, 
when  the  educated  intellect  of  Italy  almost  ceased 
to  be  Christian,  and  became  at  once  sceptical 
and  pagan  ;  or  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  with  such  notable  figures  as  Giordano 
Bruno  and  Vanini,  and  tendencies  so  significant 
as  those  impersonated  in  Montaigne,  Bodin,  and 
Charron.  But  we  may  glance  at  our  own  and  the 
previous  century.  The  eighteenth  was  the  century 
of  Rationalism  ■  and  it  is  customary  to  credit  England 
with  being  its  nursery  and  home,  where,  as  Deism, 
it  assumed  its  most  anti-Christian  and  aggressive 
form.  But  English  Deism  was,  from  a  literary 
point  of  view,  a  poor  and  vapid  thing  compared 
with  the  Free  Thought  of  the  France  whence  Pro- 
testantism and  Jansenism  had  been  expelled  that 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  63 


the  Catholicism  of  Rome  might  have  it  all  its 
own  way.  In  England  Deism  had  a  host  of  obscure 
writers,  now  well-nigh  forgotten,  irrepressible  men 
like  Toland,  men  of  mediocre  ability  and  culture 
like  Anthony  Collins,  vulgar  men  like  Chubb, 
irritated  and  disagreeable  men  like  Matthew  Tindal 
who  conformed  that  he  might  enjoy  his  Oxford 
fellowship  and  wrote  anonymously  that  he  might 
relieve  his  conscience.  But  it  can  reckon  only  two 
names  illustrious  in  literature,  Hume  and  Gibbon  ; 
the  one  embodying  his  scepticism  in  the  subtlest 
of  English  philosophies,  the  other  distilling  his  into 
the  stateliest  history  in  the  English  tongue.  But 
the  active  intellects  of  France,  the  men  who  give 
name  and  character  to  the  century,  were  either 
sceptical  or  infidel.  It  opens  with  Bayle,  once  a 
Jesuit  convert,  the  father  of  critical  Rationalism. 
The  man  who  stands  above  all  others,  and  shadows 
all  beneath,  is  Voltaire,  a  Jesuit  pupil.  The  men 
who  form  and  express  the  mind  of  Paris,  then  the 
head  and  heart  of  France,  are  Diderot,  D'Alembert, 
and  the  other  Encyclopaedists  ;  the  lion  of  its  salons 
is  Rousseau.  And  while  the  literature  of  France 
was  vehemently  anti-Christian,  the  church  of  France 
was  not  strenuously  apologetic,  as  was  the  English 
church.  Here,  men  like  Addison,  most  classical 
and  pure  and  elegant  of  English  essayists  ;  Clarke, 
most  metaphysical  and  in  logic  adventurous  of 
English  divines ;  Butler,  Anglican  Bishop  and  Chris- 
tian Apologist,  who   had  the   utmost  curiosity  to 


64 


CA  THOLICISM 


know  what  was  said,  in  order  that  he  might  ascer- 
tain whether  it  was  true  ;  Berkeley,  a  philosopher 
as  lucid  and  graceful  in  style  as  he  was  subtle 
in  argument ;  Law,  a  man  whose  apologetic  power 
was  only  surpassed  by  his  passion  for  the  holier 
mysticism ;  Bentley,  greatest  of  English  scholars, 
yet  master  of  a  pen  that  could  bite  as  if  it  were 
a  living  creature  ;  and  many  names  hardly  less  great, 
like  YVarburton,  Lardner,  Paley — made  Christian 
thought,  even  as  a  mere  matter  of  literature,  dis- 
tinguished beside  Deism.  But  in  France  the  power 
of  resistance  was  so  feeble  that  no  one  would  think 
of  naming  the  churchmen  alongside  the  men  of 
letters,  their  most  illustrious  name,  Malebranche, 
belonging,  so  far  as  philosophical  and  literary  activity 
is  concerned,  rather  to  the  seventeenth  than  the 
eighteenth  century. 

2.  But  it  were  a  grave  mistake  to  conceive  the 
defence  of  the  Christian  Faith,  or,  indeed,  of  any 
religion,  as  merely  a  work  of  literature ;  it  is  a  much 
larger  and  more  serious  thing.  The  course  of  the 
Deist  controversy  in  England  forms  an  even  more 
remarkable  contrast  to  the  history  of  the  parallel 
movement  in  France,  than  do  the  men  engaged  in  it. 
The  two  movements  were  indeed  closely  related  ;  the 
English  was,  in  a  sense,  the  source  of  the  French 
Deism.  The  bosom  at  which  both  were  suckled  was 
the  philosophy  of  Locke ;  but  of  the  children  the 
English  was  the  elder  and  formative,  the  French  was 
the  younger  and  more  imitative,  though  incalculably 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  65 

the  more  potent.    Voltaire  did  not  deduce  his  Deism 
directly  from  Locke ;  he  learned  it  from  disciples 
less  reverent  and  more  audacious  than  the  master. 
Nothing  so  astonished  him  during  his  English  resi- 
dence as  the  freedom  with  which  religion  was  treated. 
He  found,  just  as  Butler  did,  that  unbelief  was  fashion- 
able :  "  Christianity  was  not  so  much  as  a  subject  of 
inquiry;"  it  had  been  "at  length  discovered  to  be 
fictitious."    So  Mr.  Toland  had  proved  that  "  Chris- 
tianity was  not  mysterious."    "  The  Sect  of  Free 
Thinkers  "  was  the  church  of  the  wits,  the  synagogue 
of  the  socially  select.    Anthony  Collins  discoursed  of 
their  wisdom,  and  it  needed  the  audacity  of  a  Bentley 
to  satirize  their  freedom  as  "  thinking  and  judging 
as  you  find,"  "  which  every  inhabitant  of  bedlam 
practises  every  day,  as  much  as  any  of  our  illustrious 
sect."    To  him,  indeed,  their  wise  men  were  "  idiot 
evangelists";  but  to  Voltaire  they  represented  letters, 
culture,  the   men  of  sense.     Bolingbroke,  Pope's 
"  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend,"  became  Voltaire's 
master  in  Deism  ;  and  he  went  home  to  France  to 
preach  what  he  had  learned  in  England,  with  very 
different  results  from  those  that  followed  here.  In 
England  the  victory  was  with  the  apologists ;  in 
France  with  the  assailants  of  the  faith.    It  was  not 
simply  that  in  England  Deism  was  intellectually  out- 
matched, while  in  France  it  had  all  the  superiority 
of  mind.    The  English  deist,  notwithstanding  the 
general  inferiority  already  noted,  had  still  men  who 
were,  in  the  matter  of  intellect,  the  equals  of  the 

5 


66 


CA  THOLICISM 


English  apologist.  Hume  was  more  subtle  than 
Butler.  Gibbon  was  more  learned  and  ponderous 
than  Lardner  or  Paley.  Tom  Paine  was  a  greater 
master  of  English  and  of  argument  than  Beattie. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  the  number  and  social  strength  of 
their  opponents,  the  apologists  triumphed  ;  when  the 
century  ended  the  Christian  religion  was  far  more 
strongly  entrenched  in  the  reason  and  heart  of  the 
English  people  than  it  had  been  when  the  century 
began.  But  in  France  there  was  another  story. 
When  the  century  opened  it  was  still  the  great  age 
of  Louis  XIV.,  where  the  Church  was  as  illustrious  in 
intellect,  in  learning,  and  in  eloquence,  as  the  State 
was  in  regal  dignity,  in  military  prowess,  and  in 
skilful  statesmanship.  When  the  century  closed  the 
Revolution  had  come,  the  terror  had  followed,  King- 
dom and  Church  had  together  perished.  And  to  this 
catastrophe  no  cause  had  contributed  more  potently 
than  the  French  movement  which  corresponded  to 
the  English  Deism. 

Now  why  this  remarkable  difference  ?  To  examine 
all  its  roots  and  reasons  would  carry  us  much  too  far. 
But  the  main  reason  is  one  which  is  not  without  its 
bearing  on  our  argument.  In  England  the  political 
and  social  conditions  were  such  that  the  religious  was 
not  a  civil  question,  but  rather  one  intellectual  and 
ethical.  The  State  had  ceased  to  expect  uniformity 
of  worship  and  belief,  and  was  ceasing  to  enforce  it 
by  civil  disabilities  and  pains.  The  first  step  towards 
toleration  had  been  taken  ;  and  Parliament  had  prac- 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  67 


tically  recognized  that  the  civil  and  the  ecclesiastical 
society,  the  State  and  the  Church,  were  not  identical 
and  coextensive.  And  it  so  happened  that  the 
political  situation,  especially  as  concerned  the  king- 
ship, was  such  as  to  reduce  to  silence  the  only  party 
in  the  State  who  could  have  resisted  the  principle  of 
liberty.  The  old  High  Churchman,  who  believed  in 
the  divine  right  of  the  king  and  the  duty  of  passive 
obedience,  could  not  preach  his  doctrine  in  the  face 
of  the  Hanoverian  succession,  or  apply  it  to  a 
sovereign  who  reigned  by  the  will  of  the  people  and 
not  of  right  divine.  And  so  for  the  first  time  in 
English  history  since  "  the  spacious  days  of  great 
Elizabeth,"  religion  had  ceased  to  be  a  civil  concern 
and  become  the  concern  of  the  religious,  a  matter  for 
the  reason  and  the  conscience,  for  the  mind  and  the 
heart.  And  thus  it  was  freely  discussed,  tested  on 
its  own  merits,  argued  for,  argued  against,  tried  by 
logic,  proved  by  evidence,  dealt  with  as  if  it  were  of 
all  subjects  the  one  most  germane  to  the  intellect,  the 
one  thing  absolutely  common  and  accessible  to  all 
men.  And  the  result  stands  written  broad  upon  the 
face  of  the  century  :  in  a  fair  argument  and  on  a  free 
field  religion  easily  and  completely  won. 

But  the  situation  in  France  was  exactly  the  con- 
verse. In  1688  toleration  began  its  reign  with  Dutch 
William  in  England  ;  in  1685  Louis  XIV.  revoked 
the  Edict  of  Nantes,  and  began  the  reign  of  in- 
tolerance. The  Roman  Church  and  the  French 
State  were  henceforward  so  bound  together  as  to  be 


63 


CA  THOLICISM 


in  a  sense  one  body  breathing  fateful  breath.  There 
was  no  greater  enemy  of  civil  freedom  than  the 
Church  ;  no  more  vigilant  foe  of  religious  liberty  than 
the  State.  Each  confirmed  the  other  in  the  policy 
that  was  most  disastrous  to  its  good.  And  so  it 
happened  that  the  free-thinking  spirit  which  had 
returned  from  England  incarnated  in  Voltaire,  saw 
that  it  could  not  teach  religion  without  offending  the 
State ;  and  so  it  had  to  strike  at  the  State  in  order  to 
get  at  the  religion  which  had  become  the  very  soul 
of  the  tyrannical  sway.  And  there  was  no  lack  of 
provocation  to  assault.  In  popular  feeling,  dislike  of 
Voltaire,  the  mocker,  has  hidden  from  us  how  much 
there  was  to  justify  his  mockery,  and  what  really  just 
and  great  ends  it  was  often  used  to  serve.  We  forget 
that  he  was  no  mere  spirit  who  denied,  but  one  who 
strongly  affirmed  where  affirmation  was  at  once  most 
necessary  and  most  dangerous.  He  who  loves  free- 
dom ought  never  to  forget  the  services  Voltaire 
rendered  to  the  cause  he  loves.  On  behalf  of  Jean 
Calas,  and  in  the  name  of  justice  and  truth,  he  fought 
the  whole  collective  bigotry  of  France,  and  prevailed. 
He  confronted  a  church  that  in  the  age  of  Louis  the 
Well-Beloved  dared  to  persecute,  even  though  so 
many  of  her  priests  and  princes  had  ceased  to 
believe  ;  and  by  his  arguments,  his  scorn,  his  bold 
mocker}',  he  gained,  almost  single-handed,  his 
splendid  victory.  And  here  was  the  real  reason 
why  in  France  reasonableness  in  religion  or  con- 
structive religious  thought  never  had  a  chance,  or  if 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  69 


it  had,  never  was  able  to  use  it.  The  tongue  of  the 
church  was  tied,  she  had  to  defend  the  indefensible, 
and  so  was  silent ;  while  the  assault  was  delivered 
against  the  whole  broad  face  of  two  flagrant  offenders 
whose  alliance  made  them  appear  as  one :  a  State 
that,  in  its  anxiety  to  repress  a  liberty  which  the 
church  feared,  forgot  its  own  people ;  and  a  church 
that,  in  its  desire  to  sanction  and  support  a  State 
which  tried  so  hard  to  serve  it,  neglected  its  own 
duties  and  was  faithless  to  the  very  end  of  its  being. 
It  was  the  civil  independence  of  the  question  they 
discussed  that  made  English  positive  thought  so 
completely  victorious ;  it  was  the  league  of  the 
Roman  Church  and  the  autocratic  State  in  France, 
so  mischievous  to  the  good  of  both,  so  provocative 
in  both  of  evil,  that  contributed  to  their  common  and 
disastrous  overthrow.  The  policy  which  the  church 
cither  directed  or  approved  was  fatal  to  the  faith  its 
infallibility  had  been  invoked  to  define  and  defend. 

3.  And  it  is  now  as  then  ;  it  is  Catholic  countries 
that  show  the  most  radical  revolt  of  the  intellect 
from  Religion,  and  a  revolt  not  at  one  point,  but  at 
all.  In  Belgium  the  conflict  is  going  on  under  our 
very  eyes,  political  on  the  surface,  religious  beneath 
it  ;  in  Italy,  where  thought  is  most  active,  the  claims 
and  dogmas  of  the  church  are  handled  most  freely  ; 
even  in  Spain  political  aspirations  are  wedded  to 
ecclesiastical  denials.  There  is  no  country  in  which 
unbelief  is  so  strong  and  so  vindictive  as  in  France, 
so  much  a  passion  of  hate,  a  fanaticism  or  zealotry 


70 


CATHOLICISM 


against,  if  not  Religion,  yet  the  church  that  claims 
to  be  its  authoritative  vehicle  and  exponent.  The 
anti-clericals  of  the  nineteenth  century  are  more 
extreme  than  the  encyclopaedists  of  the  eighteenth  ; 
the  resolute  and  rough-handed  antagonism  of  the 
Senate  and  the  workshop  has  superseded  the  fine 
criticism  of  the  study,  and  the  delicate  yet  well-spiced 
raillery  of  the  salon.  The  very  priesthood  is  not  proof 
against  the  negative  spirit  ;  the  new  political  ideal 
steals  the  heart  of  a  Lamennais  from  Rome,  while 
German  criticism  turns  the  most  hopeful  pupil  of 
Saint  Sulpice  into  the  freest  and  most  famed  critic  of 
the  creative  Person  and  period  of  Christianity.  No 
church  has  had  such  splendid  opportunities  as  the 
Catholic  ;  everything  that  the  most  perfect  organiza- 
tion and  the  complete  control  of  rulers  and  their 
agencies  could  do  for  her  and  the  faith  she  carried, 
has  been  done.  And  if  she  has  yet  allowed  Free 
Thought,  so  often  in  its  worst  and  extremest  forms, 
to  spring  up  all  round  her,  it  is  evident  that  she  of 
all  churches  most  needs  a  relevant  and  living  apolo- 
getic. She  must  reconcile  the  intellects  that  have 
revolted  from  her,  or  lose  them  utterly ;  and  the 
only  way  of  reconciliation  is  the  way  of  reason  and 
argument.  Grant  belief  in  the  papal  claims,  and 
authority  and  infallibility  are  powerful  weapons. 
Create  doubt  or  denial  of  them,  and  they  are  but 
empty  words — the  speech  of  exaggerated  feebleness. 
Where  they  can  only  speak  their  claims,  they  but 
provoke  to  ridicule ;  where  these  claims  can  appear 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH         7 1 


as  political  or  social  forces,  they  beget  the  revolu- 
tionary and  retributive  fanaticism,  the  hate  inspired 
by  fear,  which  is  so  distinctive  of  unbelief  in  the 
Catholic  countries.  If,  then,  Catholicism  is  to  win 
the  revolted  intellect,  it  must  use  reasonable  speech  ; 
and  the  more  reasonable  it  is,  the  more  irresistible 
it  will  be.  Protestantism  frankly  appeals  to  the 
reason,  and  so  is  bound  to  persuade  it ;  Catholicism 
must  humbly  lay  aside  its  high  claims,  and  convince 
the  reason  before  it  can  rule  it.  And  so  in  either 
case  a  rational  apologetic  is  necessary,  though  in  the 
Catholic  case,  as  there  is  so  much  more  to  prove,  the 
proof  must  be  correspondingly  great  and  commanding. 

4.  It  will  not,  I  hope,  be  supposed  that  there  is 
here  any  attempt  at  a  tu  quoque.  It  were  an  ex- 
pedient fit  only  for  a  poor  controversialist  to  excuse 
the  weakness  of  the  Protestant  churches  by  charg- 
ing the  Roman  Catholic  with  impotence  ;  or  to  hide 
the  failure  of  the  Catholic  to  hold  or  control  her 
peoples,  by  magnifying  the  feebleness  of  the  Protes- 
tant. What  is  really  intended  is  to  emphasize  this 
point : — the  burden  and  responsibilities  of  the  con- 
flict with  unbelief  lie  on  all  the  churches,  and  no 
one  can  say  to  the  other,  "  the  work  is  thine,  not 
mine  "  ;  or,  with  a  more  petulant  insolence,  "  it  is  mine, 
and  not  thine."  This  duty,  indeed,  they  have  all  on 
occasion  been  forward  to  recognize,  and  we  rejoice 
to  see  men  like  Vives  the  Catholic,  Pascal  the  Jansen- 
ist,  Grotius  the  Arminian,  Leibnitz  the  Lutheran, 
Butler   the    Anglican,   Lardner  the  Presbyterian, 


72 


CA  THOLICISM 


Schleiermacher  the  German  Evangelical,  and  Martin- 
cau  the  Unitarian,  united  in  unconscious  harmony 
in  doing  for  their  several  generations  the  same  order 
of  work.  Yet  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  distinction  : 
an  apology  for  Religion  is  not  the  same  thing  as  an 
apology  for  a  church  ;  nay,  more — the  best  apologies 
for  Religion  have  been  in  no  respect  apologies  for 
specific  churches.  But,  while  the  distinction  is  clear, 
a  separation  is  not  in  every  case  possible.  If  the 
church  is  held  to  be  the  embodiment  of  the  Religion, 
so  necessary  to  it  that  the  Religion  were  impossible 
without  it,  then  the  only  complete  and  sufficient 
apology  for  the  Religion  is  an  apology  for  the  church. 
And  this  is  what  we  have  a  right  to  expect  from 
Roman  Catholicism  ;  what  is  an  insufficient  vindi- 
cation of  its  claims  as  a  church  is,  from  its  own 
point  of  view,  an  inadequate  defence  of  the  Christian 
Religion.  For  to  the  Catholic  his  church  is  his 
religion ;  the  two  are  not  distinct  and  separable, 
but  one  and  indivisible  ;  and  therefore  the  apology 
which  leaves  the  church  unjustified  leaves  the  Re- 
ligion altogether  condemned.  That  is  a  grave  aspect 
of  the  matter,  burdening  Roman  Catholicism  and 
the  Catholic  with  the  heaviest  responsibility  church 
or  man  could  bear  ;  and  it  is  the  aspect  which  gives 
significance  to  the  question  here  proposed  for  dis- 
cussion, viz.,  whether  Catholic  thought  in  England 
has  given  such  an  interpretation  and  defence  of 
Religion  as  to  make  it  more  true  and  intelligible 
and  real  to  critical  and  perplexed  and  doubting  minds. 


AND  THE  A  TO LOG \  FOR  THE  FAITH  73 


§  IV.  The  Anglo-Catholic  Movement  and  Religion 
in  England 

i.  Catholicism  in  England  cannot  be  discussed 
apart  from  that  Anglo-Catholic  movement  which 
did  so  much  to  revive  it.  As  to  the  ecclesiastico- 
religious  effects  of  that  movement,  there  is  no  need 
for  discussion.  These  are  on  all  sides  visible 
enough.  Its  ideal  of  worship  has  modified  the 
practice  of  all  the  churches,  even  of  those  most 
hostile  to  its  ideal  of  Religion.  The  religious  spirit 
of  England  is,  in  all  its  sections  and  varieties,  sweeter 
to-day  than  it  was  forty  years  ago,  more  open  to  the 
ministries  of  art  and  the  graciousness  of  order, 
possessed  of  a  larger  sense  of  "  the  community  of 
the  saints,"  the  kinship  and  continuity  of  the 
Christian  society  in  all  ages.  Even  Scotland  has 
been  touched  with  a  strange  softness,  Presbyterian 
worship  has  grown  less  bald,  organs  and  liturgies 
have  found  a  home  in  the  land  and  church  of  Knox, 
and  some  of  the  more  susceptible  sons  of  the 
Covenant  have  been  visited  by  the  ideal  of  a  Church 
at  once  British  and  Catholic,  where  prelate  and 
presbyter  should  dwell  together  in  unity.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  must  be  confessed  that  something  of 
the  old  sterner  Puritan  conscience  against  priest- 
hoods and  all  their  symbols  and  ways,  has  been 
evoked  ;  and  in  a  sense  not  true  of  any  time  between 
now  and  the  period  of  Laud,  two  ideals  of  Religion, 
each  the  radical  contradiction  of  the  other,  stand 
face  to  face  in  England,  and  contend  under  the 


74 


CATHOLICISM 


varied  masks  supplied  by  our  theological,ecclesiastical, 
and  even  political  controversies.  The  one  ideal  is 
sensuous  and  sacerdotal,  and  seeks,  by  the  way  it 
construes  and  emphasizes  the  idea  of  the  Church, 
to  secularize  the  State,  with  all  our  daily  activities 
and  occupations ;  the  other  ideal  is  spiritual  and 
ethical,  and  seeks,  by  the  way  it  construes  and 
emphasizes  the  idea  of  Religion,  to  transform  and 
transfigure  the  State,  to  sanctify  all  that  belongs  to 
the  common  life  of  man.  The  fundamental  question 
is,  whether  an  organized  church  which  is,  alike  in 
history  and  administration,  not  in  the  civil  but  in 
the  ecclesiastical  sense,  a  political  institution, — or  a 
spiritual  faith,  which  is  in  its  nature  a  regenerative 
and  regnant  moral  energy  for  the  whole  man,  is  to 
prevail.  And  the  more  obvious  this  question  becomes, 
the  more  the  issues  are  simplified,  and  men  are 
forced  to  determine  whether  they  are  to  be  ruled  by 
a  church  or  governed  by  a  Religion.  The  move- 
ment which  has  made  or  is  making  our  people 
conscious  of  this  vital  issue,  has  rendered  an  extra- 
ordinary service  to  the  men  and  churches  of  to-day. 

2.  But  the  most  remarkable  ecclesiastico-religious 
results  achieved  by  Anglo-Catholicism  are  those 
to  be  found  within  the  two  churches  chiefly  con- 
cerned, the  Anglican  and  the  Roman.  Though  so 
many  of  the  men  who  inaugurated  and  represented 
the  movement  left  the  English  church,  yet  the  spirit 
they  had  created,  and  many  of  the  men  they  had 
inspired,  remained   within  her.    And  the  Anglo- 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH 


75 


Catholic  ideal  has  continued  to  live  and  work  with- 
in her  like  a  regenerative  spirit,  has  filled  all  her 
sons,  even  the  most  resistant,  with  new  ambitions, 
has  both  narrowed  and  broadened  her  affections  and 
aims,  has  changed  old  antipathies  into  new  sym- 
pathies, has  made  her  devouter  in  worship  and  more 
devoted  alike  in  her  practical  action  and  ideal  ends. 
Rome  is  judged  with  more  perfect  charity,  Dissenters 
are  judged  with  more  rigorous  severity.  Unity  is 
loved,  and  historical  continuity  coveted,  as  the  con- 
dition and  channel  of  the  most  potent  and  needed 
graces.  The  freedom  and  independence  of  the 
church  has  become  a  watchword,  Erastianism  a 
hated  and  unholy  thing.  The  Sovereignty  of  the 
Redeemer  has  become  a  living  faith,  and  the  symbols 
that  speak  of  His  presence  and  work  and  activity 
are  invested  with  a  solemn  and  sacramental  and 
even  sacrificial  significance  ;  while  the  acts  that  re- 
cognize His  Deity  and  express  man's  devotion,  are 
performed  with  a  new  sense  of  awe  and  reverence. 
The  worship  has  grown  at  once  statelier  and  more 
expressive  ;  men  have  become  more  conscious  of  its 
beauty  and  its  power,  have  come  to  feel  how  com- 
pletely it  can  articulate  their  needs,  satisfy  and 
uplift  their  souls,  bring  them  into  the  company  of  the 
saintly  dead  and  into  communion  with  the  Eternal. 
The  English  church  has  a  deeper  sense  of  sin  and 
a  greater  love  for  sinners,  and  seeks  to  use  her 
symbolism  and  her  service  to  bring  Christ  and  His 
salvation  nearer  to  the  hearts  and  consciences  of 


76 


CA  THOLICISM 


men.  The  Catholic  ideal  may  be  to  many  sensuous, 
poor  through  the  very  wealth  of  its  symbolism,  a 
materialized  and  so  depraved  translation  of  the  idea 
of  the  Kingdom,  which  must  ever  remain  "  of 
Heaven,"  that  it  may  reign  over  earth  ;  but,  what- 
ever it  may  be  to  such,  no  one  can  deny  that  it  has 
been  to  the  church  of  England  a  spirit  of  life  and 
energy.  It  is,  especially  when  the  historical  grounds 
on  which  it  rests  are  considered,  a  splendid  example 
of  the  power  of  faith,  and  of  the  creative  and  trans- 
figurative  force  of  the  religious  imagination.  From 
this  point  of  view  it  has,  indeed,  a  most  pathetic 
side  ;  but  its  pathos  need  not  blind  us  to  the  wonder- 
ful things  it  has  accomplished,  though  it  may  make 
us  wonder  at  the  power  which  has  accomplished 
them.  Yet  we  need  not  wonder,  for  of  old  God 
chose  the  things  that  were  not,  to  bring  to  nought 
the  things  that  were. 

3.  And  on  Catholicism  itself  the  Anglo-Catholic 
movement  has  acted  no  less  potently.  It  has 
changed  its  spirit  and  attitude  to  the  English  people, 
and  the  English  people's  to  it :  has  indeed,  in  a  sense 
unknown  since  the  Reformation,  made  Roman 
Catholicism  English.  Catholic  emancipation  supplied 
one  of  the  conditions  of  the  change,  but  the  Oxford 
movement,  and  its  issues,  accomplished  it.  What 
Cardinal  Newman  describes  as  "  the  Protestant  view 
of  the  Catholic  Church"  is  an  example  of  the  remark- 
able limitation  of  his  genius,  his  inability  to  under- 
stand where  he  does  not  sympathize.    The  "  view," 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  77 


though,  no  doubt,  voraciously  reminiscent,  is  but  a 
series  of  prejudices,  all  the  more  vulgar  that  they 
were  those  of  cultured  men.    What  the  true  view  is 
does  not  here  concern  us ;  only  this :  the  English 
view  was  very  much  what  the  course  of  history  had 
made  it.    Catholicism  had  been  anti-English :  in  its 
interests  foreign  potentates  had  threatened  England, 
and  had  tried  to  execute  their  threats ;  Catholics  had 
plotted  against  Elizabeth,  and  against  the  first  James  ; 
they  had  fought  for  absolutism  under  his  son,  had 
stood  by  the  later  Stuarts,  and  had  intrigued  for  their 
return.    Catholicism,  in  countries  where  the  royal 
might  threaten  the  papal  supremacy,  had,  by  the 
mouth  of  men  like  Suarez  and  Mariana,  preached 
strong  doctrines  as  to  the  duties  of  kings  and  the 
rights  of  peoples.   But  in  the  later  seventeenth  century 
in  England — where  it  had  everything  to  hope  from  the 
prince,  and  nothing  from  the  people — its  loyalty  was 
to  the  ruler,  who  promised  or  seemed  to  promise  to 
govern  in  its  interests,  not  to  the  law  or  to  the  ruled. 
Indeed,  nothing  is  so  indicative  of  the  blindness  which 
has  happened  to  the  Roman  church — and  it  is  but  a 
form  of  the  fatal  intellectual  incompetence  which  falls 
upon  all  communities  that  live  by  an  over-central- 
ized sovereignty — as   its  fatuous   faith  in  reigning 
authorities,   and   its   inability  to  understand  and 
control  that  on  which  all  authority  must  ultimately 
rest,  viz.,  the  mind  and  heart  and  will  of  the  people. 
To   this   there   may  be  the   proverbial  exception, 
which  proves  the  rule ;  but  as  to  the  fact  of  the  rule, 


78 


CATHOLICISM 


the  student  of  modern  history  will  be  the  last  person 
to  doubt.     And  largely  because  of  this  rule  the 
English  Catholics  lived  as  aliens  in  the  land,  under 
heavy  civil  disabilities,  with  the  home  of  their 
religious  interest  and  the  source  of  their  religious 
inspiration  elsewhere.    Time  brought  amelioration ; 
Spain  fell,  and  could  launch  no  second  Armada, 
raise  no  army  England  need  fear ;  the  Stuarts  were 
expelled,  and  France  was  soon  too  completely  broken 
to  have  either  the  will  or  the  power  to  interfere  on 
their  behalf.   Freed  from  fear  of  invasion  or  rebellion, 
the  attitude  of  England   changed.     She  became 
tolerant,  came  to  understand  what  civil  and  religious 
liberty  meant,  celebrated — moved  in  great  measure  by 
the  persuasion  of  the  men  most  radically  opposed 
to   Catholicism — one   memorable    moment  in  her 
process  of  learning   by  "  Catholic  Emancipation." 
Liberty  allowed  a  completer  incorporation  with  the 
English  people,  a  new  baptism  in  the  English  spirit,  a 
healthier,  because  a  freer,  profession  of  faith.  And 
this  had  been  prepared  for  from  within.    The  saintly 
Challoner   and   the   brave   Milner   had  quickened 
Catholic  religious  zeal ;  Lingard,  with  notable  erudi- 
tion and  independence,  had  made  English  history  its 
apology  ;  and  Cardinal  Wiseman  improved  the  new 
day  that  had  dawned  by  an  apologetic  of  rare  skill 
and  eloquence.    But  the  foreign  taint  still  clung  to 
Catholicism  ;  it  wanted  English  character  and  breed- 
ing,  national   traditions   and    aspirations.  Even 
Wiseman  was  but  an  Italian  priest,  a  professor  from 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  79 


Rome,  Irish  by  descent,  Spanish  by  birth.  What  it 
wanted  the  Oxford  movement  gave,  a  distinctively 
English  quality  and  aspect.  The  men  carried  over 
to  Rome  had  received  the  most  typical  English 
education,  their  leader  was  the  greatest  living  master 
of  the  English  tongue.  They  had  been  nursed  in 
Anglican  traditions,  were,  some  of  them,  learned 
Anglican  divines,  who  could  not  forget  their  learning 
or  change  their  blood  and  breeding  with  their  church, 
or  cancel  and  cast  out  the  ancient  inheritance  they 
had  so  long  possessed  and  loved.  They  were 
Catholics  of  an  altogether  new  type ;  their  memories 
and  instincts  were  not  of  a  persecuted  sect,  hated 
and  alien  in  England,  but  of  a  church  proudly  and 
consciously  English  ;  the  superstructure  of  their  faith 
and  life  might  be  Roman,  but  the  basis  was  Anglican, 
and  the  superstructure  had  to  be  accommodated  to  the 
basis,  not  the  basis  to  the  superstructure.  Cardinal 
Newman  does  not  build  on  Thomas  Aquinas  or 
Bellarmine  or  Bossuet ;  they  only  supply  the  but- 
tresses and  pillars,  the  arches  and  gargoyles  of  his 
faith  :  his  fundamental  principles  are  those  of  Butler  ; 
he  reasons  when  he  is  gravest,  fullest  of  conviction 
and  most  anxious  to  convince,  in  the  methods  and  on 
the  premisses  of  the  Analogy.  For  polemical  purposes 
he  is  all  the  better  a  Catholic  for  having  been  an 
Anglican  ;  and,  indeed,  in  a  very  real  sense,  he  did 
not  cease  to  be  an  Anglican  when  he  became  a 
Roman  Catholic.  And  it  is  this  persistence  of  the 
primitive  type  that  has  been  the  strength  of  the 


So 


CA  THOLICISM 


derivative.  Though  the  men  went  to  Rome,  they  yet 
remained  English ;  the  principles  that  carried  them 
had  been  educed  and  developed  within  the  Anglican 
church  and  in  its  interests ;  and  so  men  and  princi- 
ples alike  tended  to  naturalize  Catholicism  on  the 
one  hand,  and  to  beget  a  patient  and  respectful 
hearing  for  it  on  the  other.  People  wished  to  believe 
that  men  they  admired  and  loved  had  acted  with 
reason  and  had  accepted  what  was  reasonable ;  the 
old  attitude  to  Romanism  ceased,  and  a  public,  well 
disposed  for  conviction,  invited  the  best  efforts  of  men 
so  well  able  to  convince. 

§  V.  Whether  the  Catholic  Apology  was  equal 
to  the  Need 

i.  Now,  whether  Catholicism  has  profited  by  this 
extraordinary  change,  and  the  gains  that  caused  it, 
as  much  as  she  hoped  to  do,  or  as  she  might  and  even 
ought  to  have  done,  or  whether  her  once  high  hopes 
have  been  dashed  with  bitterest  disappointment,  is 
not  a  matter  that  concerns  us.  But  here  is  a  matter 
that  does — the  movement  that  made  Religion  more 
real  and  living  to  a  large  number  of  cultivated  men 
did  a  true  interpretative  and  so  apologetic  work.  It 
is  a  blunder  of  the  worst  kind  to  imagine  that  any 
one  form  of  Christianity  can  be  served  by  any  other 
being  made  ridiculous.  It  belongs  to  the  madness 
of  the  sectary,  whether  Catholic  or  anti-Catholic,  to 
believe  that  his  own  system  grows  more  sane  as 
others  are  made  to  seem  less  rational.     But  the 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH         8 1 


Protestant  ought  to  be  as  pleased  to  discover  the 
reason  in  Catholicism,  as  the  Catholic  to  find  the 
truth  in  Protestantism  ;  what  makes  either  ridiculous 
makes  the  other  less  credible.  For  if  there  is  differ- 
ence there  is  also  agreement;  and  while  the  difference 
is  in  man's  relation  to  the  truth,  the  agreement  is  in 
the  most  cardinal  of  the  truths  that  stand  related 
to  man.  If  Christ  lives  within  Catholicism,  He  ought 
to  seem  the  more  wonderful,  and  it  the  less  odious  to 
the  Protestant ;  if  within  Protestantism,  He  ought  to 
appear  the  more  gracious,  and  it  the  less  void  of 
grace  and  truth  to  the  Catholic.  Unmeasured  speech 
is  either  insincere  or  unveracious  ;  and  the  worst 
unveracity  is  the  one  that  denies  good  to  be  where 
both  good  and  God  are.  Now,  the  movement  that 
made  many  men  better  Christians  by  making  them 
Catholics,  did  a  good  deed  for  Religion.  By  showing 
that  there  was  reason  in  Catholicism  it  made  history 
more  reasonable;  it  made,  too,  the  honesty,  saintliness, 
intellectual  integrity  and  thoroughness  of  many 
schoolmen  and  thinkers  more  intelligible,  and  evoked 
the  charity  that  dared  to  love  and  admire  where 
religious  and  intellectual  differences  were  deepest. 
There  were,  indeed,  more  irenical  influences  in  the 
movement  than  the  men  who  conducted  it  either 
imagined  or  desired. 

2.  But  when  we  have  said  all  that  can  be  justly 
or  even  generously  said  in  praise  of  the  ecclesi- 
astico-religious  effects  of  this  movement,  have  we 
said  enough  ?    England  had  some  claim  on  the 

6 


82 


CA  THOLIC/SM 


men  who  led  it,  and  so  had  the  Christian  Re- 
ligion. England  had  done  something  for  the  men, 
had  borne,  nursed,  reared,  educated  them  ;  had  en- 
dowed them  with  her  best  learning,  the  wealth 
of  her  choicest  teachers,  the  noble  inheritance  of 
her  traditions  and  aspirations.  The  Christian  Re- 
ligion had  quickened  and  cultivated  them,  had  in- 
spired them  with  high  faith  and  lofty  ideals,  had 
given  them  a  splendid  opportunity  for  service  and 
equal  ability  to  serve.  The  land  and  the  faith  that 
had  so  entreated  them,  had  a  right  to  expect  from 
them  a  correspondent  measure  of  help.  They  stood 
at  the  breaking  of  a  day  that  dawned  with  abun- 
dant promise  of  new  life  ;  yet  with  the  certainty  of 
all  the  difficulties  new  life  ever  encounters,  and  must 
overcome  or  die.  The  century  of  hard  rationalism 
was  ended  ;  its  Deism,  Free  Thought,  Encyclopxd- 
ism,  Materialized  Religion,  and  Secularized  Church, 
had  perished  in  revolution  ;  and  in  revolution,  and 
through  it,  the  spirit  of  the  new  age  had  been  born. 
In  philosophy  a  constructive,  though  critical,  Tran- 
scendentalism replaced  the  subtle  and  barren  Em- 
piricism that  by  the  mouth  of  the  sceptic  Hume  had 
confessed  that  it  knew  not  what  man  or  nature 
was,  whence  they  had  come  or  whither  they  tended. 
In  literature  the  genius  of  Goethe  had  created  an 
ideal  of  culture  that  seemed  higher  and  completer 
than  the  ideal  of  religion.  Byron  had  assailed  the 
old  moral  and  social  conventionalisms,  magnifying 
independence  of  them  into,  if  not  the  chief  virtue, 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  83 


yet  the  best  note  of  the  nobler  manhood.  Shelley 
had  given  clear  and  musical  voice  to  the  passion  for 
freedom  and  hatred  of  the  hoary  despotisms  that 
had  hindered  the  progress  and  marred  the  happi- 
ness of  man.  Wordsworth  had  made  nature  radiant 
with  the  light  of  indwelling  spirit  ;  Scott  had  evolved 
from  the  past  visions  of  chivalry  and  nobleness  to 
rebuke,  to  cheer,  and  to  inspire  the  present  ;  Cole- 
ridge had  made  the  speculative  reason  and  the  crea- 
tive imagination  become  as  sisters  ministrant  to  faith ; 
everywhere  a  brighter,  more  genial  and  reasonable 
spirit  possessed  man.  In  politics  the  old  dynastic 
and  despotic  ambitions  had  fallen  before  the  up- 
risen peoples  ;  they  were  possessed  by  a  new  sense 
of  brotherhood,  a  passion  for  ordered  freedom,  for 
justice,  for  the  reign  of  the  law  that  would  spoil 
oppression,  secure  to  each  his  rights,  and  require 
from  all  their  duties.  In  such  an  hour  of  regenera- 
tion and  the  activity  of  the  regenerated,  Religion 
could  not  be  allowed  to  escape  change ;  the  day 
of  humdrum  respectability  was  over.  It  was  not 
enough  that  the  church  should  stand  by  the  throne, 
indifferent  to  the  character  of  him  who  filled  it  ;  it 
must  feel  the  new  spirit,  and  either  open  its  heart 
to  it  or  by  shutting  the  door  against  it  seal  its  own 
doom.  And  when  the  new  spirit  knocked  at  the 
door  of  the  English  church,  her  then  most  potent 
and  active  sons  knew  not  what  better  thing  to 
do  than  to  evoke  an  ancient  ecclesiastical  ideal  to 
answer  and  withstand  it.    And  it  was  out  of  this 


84 


CATHOLICISM 


appeal  to  a  tried  and  vanquished  past  against  a 
living  present,  that  the  Anglo-Catholic  movement 
was  born.  It  was  less  the  child  of  a  great  love  than 
of  a  great  hate,  hatred  of  what  its  spokesman  and 
founder  called  "  Liberalism."  What  he  so  called  he 
never  understood  ;  his  hatred  was  too  absolute  to 
allow  him  to  get  near  enough  to  see  it  as  it  was. 
He  was  a  poet,  and  had  the  poet's  genius  and 
passion ;  where  he  did  not  love  he  could  not  under- 
stand ;  what  he  hated  he  held  before  his  imagina- 
tion, and  took  a  sort  of  Dantesque  pleasure  in 
making  it  hideous  enough  to  justify  his  hate.  This 
abhorred  "  Liberalism  "  might  have  had  a  threaten- 
ing front  to  mole-eyed  prerogative  and  privilege  ; 
but  the  eye  of  the  spiritual  ought  to  have  read  its 
heart,  seen  the  probabilities  of  danger,  but  the  in- 
finite possibilities  of  good — its  hatred  of  wrong,  its 
love  of  justice,  its  desire  for  sweeter  manners,  purer 
laws,  its  purpose  to  create  a  wealthier,  happier  and 
freer  state.  And  the  spirit  that  so  discerned  would 
have  helped  by  bringing  Religion  into  "  Liberalism  " 
to  make  "  Liberalism  "  religious.  But  John  Henry 
Newman  saw  nothing  of  the  enthusiasm  of  righteous- 
ness and  humanity  that  was  in  its  heart ;  saw  only 
its  superficial  antagonisms,  to  political  injustice,  to 
ecclesiastical  privilege,  to  the  venerable  but  mischie- 
vous, because  richly  endowed,  inutilities  of  Church 
and  State ;  and  so  he  faced  it  as  if  it  were  the  very 
demon  of  revolution,  the  fraudulent  disguise  of  Athe- 
ism and  impiety.    To  counteract  it  he  did  not  fall 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH 


85 


back  on  the  Christianity  of  Christ — that  was  too 
closely  allied  to  the  thing  he  hated  ;  but  he  tried 
to  recall  the  lost  ideal  of  an  authoritative  church, 
the  teacher,  interpreter,  and  embodiment  of  Religion. 
His  bulwark  against  "  Liberalism  "  was  authority ; 
the  organized  illiberalism  of  a  body  ecclesiastical. 
The  ghost  of  a  mediaeval  church  was  evoked  to 
exorcise  the  resurgent  spirit  of  Christ  in  man. 

That  was  a  most  calamitous  choice,  the  loss  of  a 
golden  opportunity  for  the  highest  service.  New- 
man, though  not  the  most  gifted  religious  teacher 
of  the  century,  had  in  him  above  any  man  of  his 
day  the  quickening  spirit,  the  power  to  search  the 
conscience,  to  rouse  the  heart,  to  fire  the  imagina- 
tion, to  move  the  will.  He  was  without  the  specu- 
lative genius  of  Coleridge  ;  the  swift  insight  that 
could  read  the  heart  of  a  mystery  ;  the  mental  hero- 
ism that  could  explore  every  part  of  an  opposed 
system  ;  the  chivalry  that  could  entreat  it  nobly ;  the 
synthetic  mind  that  could  resist  the  fascination  of 
false  antitheses  and  antagonisms  ;  the  constructive 
intellect  that  could  bring  into  order  and  unity  ele- 
ments that  seemed  to  hasty  and  shallow  thinkers 
chaotic  and  hostile.  But  he  had,  in  a  far  more  emi- 
nent degree,  the  qualities  that  teach  and  persuade 
men  ;  a  concentration  of  purpose  ;  an  intensity,  even 
as  it  were  a  singleness,  of  conviction';  a  moral  passion, 
a  prophetic  fervour,  which  yet  clothed  itself  in  the 
most  graceful  speech  ;  a  strength  and  skill  of  spiritual 
inquisition  or  analysis,  enabling  him  to  reach  the 


86 


CA  THOLICISM 


inmost  recesses  of  the  heart  and  probe  the  sensitive 
secrets  of  the  conscience ;  a  humour  now  grim  and 
fierce,  now  playful  and  tender ;  an  imagination  that 
often  dominated,  yet  always  served  his  intellect,  and 
was  most  restrained  when  most  indulged,  its  pic- 
tures but  making  his  meaning  more  clear  and  dis- 
tinct. He  had  not  the  large  charity  of  Maurice,  the 
power  to  read  the  system  through  the  man  and 
make  the  man  illustrate  the  system,  finding  the 
good  in  both.  Indeed,  especially  in  his  early  days, 
he  could  not  differ  without  disliking :  dissent  from 
a  man's  opinions  rose  almost  into  personal  contempt 
or  even  hate  of  the  man.  Nor  had  he  the  massive 
and  human-hearted  manhood  of  Arnold,  who  ever 
loved  persons  and  humanity  more  than  systems  and 
things  ;  while  of  Newman  it  may  be  said,  he  valued 
persons  only  as  they  were  the  representatives  of  sys- 
tems and  typical  of  things.  Nor  had  he  Whately's 
sober  integrity  of  mind,  the  English  sagacity  that 
liked  to  look  things  straight  in  the  face  and  see  them 
as  they  were.  But  he  had  as  none  of  these  had,  as 
no  man  in  this  century  has  had,  command  over  the 
English  people  through  his  command  over  the  Eng- 
lish tongue  ;  the  enthusiasm  of  a  reformer  who  be- 
lieved in  the  absolute  sufficiency  of  the  reform  he 
was  conducting ;  who  lived,  thought,  spoke  like  a 
man  who  had  a  mission  ;  and  whose  mission  it  was 
to  reclaim  the  people  of  England  for  their  church 
and  their  God.  And  the  gift  he  had  he  could  not 
exercise  without  moving  men  ;  they  rallied  to  him 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH 


87 


or  recoiled  from  him ;  his  speech  made  disciples, 
agitated  his  church,  filled  it  with  strong  hopes  and 
strange  fears,  raised  high  expectations  at  Rome,  and 
made  England  resound  with  the  noise  and  confusion 
of  long  silent  controversies.  When  we  look  into 
those  disturbed  times,  the  thing  that  most  strikes 
and  abides  with  us  is,  the  presence  and  personality 
of  the  man  that  moved  them. 

3.  We  may,  then,  represent  the  matter  thus  : — 
the  formative  period  of  Newman's  life,  1 826-1 833, 
and  the  decade  that  followed,  may  be  described  as 
a  period  during  which  men  were  waiting  for  a  rele- 
vant constructive  interpretation  of  the  Religion  of 
Christ.  The  revolutionary  forces  were  spent,  con- 
structive forces  were  at  work  in  every  region  of 
thought  and  life ;  and  they  neededj  but  the  electric 
touch  of  a  great  religious  ideal  to  be  unified  and 
made  ministrant  to  Religion.  The  old  monarchical 
and  oligarchical  theories  having  perished,  the  Philo- 
sophical Radicals  were  seeking,  with  but  poor  suc- 
cess, a  new  basis  for  politics,  that  they  might 
determine  what  was  the  chief  good ;  and  new  methods 
in  legislation,  that  they  might  promote  and  secure 
the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number.  John 
Stuart  Mill  had  just  escaped  from  the  dogmatic  Em- 
piricism of  his  father  ;  had  been  spiritually  awakened 
by  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth  and  the  philosophy  of 
Coleridge  ;  and  was  looking  about  for  a  faith  by 
which  to  order  his  life.  Charles  Darwin  was  just 
beginning  to  watch  the  methods  of  nature  and  to 


88 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


learn  how  to  interpret  her ;  and  while  Newman  was 
making  verses  and  gathering  impulses  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, he  was  away  in  the  Beagle  exploring  many 
seas  and  lands.  In  the  "loneliest  nook  in  Britain," 
under  the  shadow  of  hills  and  within  sight  of  moor- 
lands consecrated  by  the  heroism  and  martyrdoms 
of  his  Covenanting  forefathers,  Thomas  Carlyle  was 
doing  his  strenuous  best  to  wed  the  thoughts  that  had 
come  to  him  from  German  literature  and  philosophy, 
with  the  substance  and  spirit  of  his  ancestral  faith  ; 
the  effort  taking  visible  shape  in  the  egoistic  ideal- 
ism of  his  Sartor  Resartus,  and  leading  him  to  look 
into  man  and  his  recent  history  with  the  eyes  that 
were  to  see  in  the  French  Revolution  the  tragedy 
of  retribution  and  righteousness.  Transcendental 
Idealism  was  in  full  career  in  Germany ;  Hegel  and 
Schleiermacher  were  lecturing  in  Berlin,  the  one  ap- 
plying his  philosophy  to  the  explication  of  religion 
and  history,  the  other  his  criticism  to  the  documents, 
facts,  and  doctrines  of  the  Christian  faith ;  while  in 
Tubingen,  Strauss  was  combining  and  developing 
the  two,  with  results  that  were  to  break  upon  the 
alarmed  world  in  a  certain  Lcben  Jesu.  In  France, 
Saint  Simon  had  developed  his  Nouveau  Christian- 
isnie,  pleading  that  Religion  might  be  more  an 
energy  directing  all  "  social  forces  towards  the  moral 
and  physical  amelioration  of  the  class  which  is  at 
once  the  most  numerous  and  the  most  poor  "  :  and 
Comte  had  begun  the  Cours  de  Philosophic  Positive, 
explaining  how  the  theological   and  metaphysical 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  89 


states  had  been  passed,  and  the  final  and  positive 
state  had  come ;  and  what  were  the  new  ideas  of 
Society,  of  God,  and  of  Religion  on  which  it  was 
to  rest.  Everywhere  the  struggle  was  towards  posi- 
tive ideas,  constructive  ideals,  such  an  interpretation 
of  man's  nature,  history,  and  universe,  as  would 
tend  to  a  more  perfect  organization  of  society  and 
a  better  ordering  of  life.  It  was  indeed  a  splendid 
moment  for  an  Apologist  built  after  the  manner  of 
Augustine,  with  his  insight  into  the  actualities  of 
the  present  and  the  possibilities  of  the  future,  with 
his  belief  in  God  and  truth,  the  infinite  adaptability 
and  comprehensiveness,  imperial  authority  and  per- 
vasive spirit  of  Religion.  He  would  have  seized 
the  new  ideas,  translated  them  into  their  Christian 
equivalents,  realizing,  elevating,  vivifying,  organizing 
them  by  the  act  of  translation.  He  would  have 
found  that  every  attempt  to  find  law  and  order  in 
nature,  to  discover  method  and  progress  in  creation, 
without  leap  or  gap,  violence  or  interference,  whether 
with  Hegel,  by  the  evolution  of  the  transcendental 
idea,  or,  what  was  indeed  only  the  empirical  side  of 
the  same,  with  Darwin,  by  the  gradation  and  blend- 
ing of  genera  and  species, — was  no  attempt  to  expel 
God  from  nature,  but  only  to  make  nature  more 
perfectly  express  Him,  and  be  more  wholly  His.  He 
would  have  welcomed  every  endeavour  to  read  anew 
the  past  of  man,  to  find  law  in  it,  to  discover  the 
affinities  of  thought  and  custom  and  belief — as  evi- 
dence that  men  were  at  last  awakening  to  the  truth 


90 


CA  THOLICISM 


that  the  race  was  a  vast  whole,  a  mighty  organism, 
whose  parts  lived  in  and  through  each  other,  and  were 
bound  to  live  each  for  the  other  and  all  for  the  whole  ; 
and  an  organism  which  lived  and  grew  not  simply 
by  intercourse  and  conflict  with  its  environment,  but 
under  the  reign  and  for  the  ends  of  a  universal 
Reason,  an  omnipresent  Providence.  He  would  have 
seen  in  the  ambition  for  freedom  ;  for  more  and  more 
equitably  distributed  wealth  ;  for  a  more  perfect  state, 
a  society  where  the  hated  inequalities  of  the  past  had 
ceased,  and  a  true  human  brotherhood  was  realized — 
an  ambition  inspired  by  Christ,  the  direct  fruit  of  His 
humane  and  beneficent  spirit.  And  he  would  have 
hailed  the  love,  which  was  even  becoming  a  worship 
of  humanity,  as  proof  that  the  first  principles  of 
"  the  kingdom  of  God  "  were  at  last  beginning  to  be 
understood.  And  this  relation  to  the  new  thought 
would  have  determined  his  apology.  It  would  not 
have  invoked  the  authority  of  a  church  that,  what- 
ever its  claims,  had  proved  its  impotence  by  the 
inexorable  process  of  history  in  the  indubitable 
language  of  fact  ;  but  it  would  have  said  : — "  This 
awakening  is  of  God,  and  must  be  accepted  as  His, 
not  dealt  with  as  if  it  were  the  devil's.  These  new 
ideas  of  order  in  nature  and  history,  of  social  justice 
and  human  rights,  those  ambitions  for  a  larger  good 
which  '  Liberalism '  so  ill  expresses,  and  Socialism 
so  badly  embodies  and  fails  to  realize — are  all  of 
Christ  ;  they  mean  that  men  are  getting  ready  to 
understand  the  idea  of  His  Kingdom.    It  compre- 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FA  17 II  91 


hends,  for  it  created  these  new  ideas ;  into  its  lan- 
guage they  must  be  translated,  that  they  may  find 
their  most  perfect  forms,  live  in  the  organism  and 
possess  the  energy  that  will  enable  them  to  do  their 
work.  The  progress  of  man  and  the  Church  of  God 
are  two  kindred  things  ;  all  true  knowledge  is  know- 
ledge of  truth,  and  truth  is  holy  ;  to  know  it  is  to 
be  made  better,  more  like  what  God  meant  man  to 
be.  Let  knowledge  grow — whatever  truth  science  dis- 
covers religion  blesses  and  appropriates  ;  let  research, 
whether  as  physical  investigation  or  historical  criticism, 
pursue  her  quest ;  for  love  of  truth  is  love  of  God,  and 
the  more  we  find  of  it,  the  more  we  know  of  Him." 

4.  What  has  just  been  said  is  meant  to  indicate 
what  would  have  been  the  attitude  of  a  really  con- 
structive Christian  thinker  in  face  of  the  new  and 
nascent  thought.  He  would  have  recognized  as 
Christian,  and  claimed  for  Christianity,  the  new 
spirit,  with  all  its  nobler  truths,  ideals,  aims.  What 
belongs  of  right  to  the  Christian  Religion  ought  to 
be  incorporated  with  it ;  what  is  so  incorporated 
can  never  become  a  facile  and  deadly  weapon  in  the 
hands  of  the  enemy.  But  Newman's  attitude  was 
precisely  the  opposite.  Change  was  in  the  air ;  he 
felt  it,  feared  it,  hated  it.  He  idealized  the  past,  he 
disliked  the  present,  and  he  trembled  for  the  future. 
His  only  hope  was  in  a  return  to  the  past,  and  to 
a  past  which  had  never  existed  save  in  the  imagination 
of  the  romancer.  What  he  hated  and  resisted  he 
did  not  take  the  trouble  to  understand,    He  was  in 


92 


CA  THOLICISM 


this  respect  a  conspicuous  contrast  to  his  friends 
Hugh  James  Rose  and  Edward  Bouverie  Pusey, 
especially  the  latter,  who,  in  his  memorable,  though, 
unhappily,  afterwards  recalled  reply  to  the  famous 
sermons  of  the  former  against  German  Rationalism, 
showed  thorough  knowledge  of  the  older  Continental 
criticism, — though,  as  it  turned  out,  the  knowledge 
was  not  his  own, — as  well  as  the  chivalry  that  could 
dare  to  speak  the  truth  concerning  it.  But  one 
seeks  in  vain  in  Newman's  early  writings — poems, 
essays,  articles,  pamphlets,  tracts — for  any  sign  or 
phrase  indicative  of  real  comprehension  of  the  forces 
he  opposed.  He  does  not  comprehend  their  real 
nature  or  drift ;  what  reasons  they  have  for  their 
being,  what  good  they  have  in  them,  what  truth  ; 
what  wrongs  to  redress,  what  rights  to  achieve  :  he 
only  feels  that  they  are  inimical  to  his  ideals.  There 
is  no  evidence  that  he  ever  tried  to  place  himself 
in  the  position  of  the  philosophical  radical,  or  the 
rational  critic,  or  the  constructive  socialist,  or  the 
absolute  idealist ;  and  look  at  his  and  their  questions 
through  their  eyes  and  from  their  standpoint.  He 
hated  them  and  their  works  too  utterly  to  attempt 
to  do  so — perhaps  he  was  haunted  by  a  great  doubt 
as  to  what  might  happen  if  he  did  ;  but  the  result 
was,  he  resisted  he  knew  not  what,  and  knew  not 
how  to  resist  it.  As  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  he 
resisted  it  in  the  least  effectual  way.  He  emphasized 
the  church  idea,  the  historical  continuity,  sanctity, 
authority,  rights,  prerogatives  and  powers  of  the 


AND  THE  APOLOGY  FOR  THE  FAITH  93 


organized  society  or  body  which  called  itself  here 
the  Anglican,  there  the  Catholic  church.  The  idea 
grew  on  him  ;  the  more  he  claimed  for  the  church, 
the  more  he  had  to  claim  ;  the  more  he  set  it  in 
opposition  to  the  movement  and  tendencies  of  living 
thought,  the  more  absolute  and  divine  he  had  to 
make  its  authority.  The  logic  of  the  situation  was 
inexorable, — if  the  church  alone  could  save  man 
from  the  spirit  embodied  in  "  Liberalism,"  then  it 
must  be  a  divine  and  infallible  church,  the  vicar 
and  voice  of  God  on  earth.  But  the  logic  of  the 
situation  was  one,  and  the  logic  of  history  another 
and  tragically  different.  In  the  past  Catholic  au- 
thority had  bent  like  the  rush  in  the  river  before 
the  stream  and  tendency  of  thought ;  if  it  had  had 
divine  rights  it  had  been  without  divine  wisdom ; 
men  and  countries  it  had  owned,  it  had  been  un- 
able to  hold  ;  and  for  centuries  the  noblest  life, 
the  best  minds,  the  highest  and  purest  literatures  of 
Europe  had  stood  outside  its  pale.  And  what  had 
been,  was  to  be.  Newman  went  to  Rome,  and  car- 
ried with  him,  or  drew  after  him,  men  who  accepted 
his  principles  ;  but  the  "  Liberalism  "  he  hated  went 
its  way,  all  the  mightier  and  more  victorious  for  the 
kind  of  barrier  he  had  tried  to  build  against  it. 
He  succeeded  wonderfully  in  making  Roman  Catho- 
lics of  Anglicans  ;  but  he  failed  in  the  apologetic  that 
saves  the  infidel,  and  baptizes  the  spirit  of  a  rational 
and  revolutionary  age  into  the  faith  of  Christ. 
February^  1885. 


Ill 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT 
'"T^HE  Catholic  Revival  ought  not  to  be  conceived 


X  as  a  mere  English  or  insular  movement :  so 
far  as  English,  it  was  rather  like  a  wave  which  reached 
our  shores  from  a  larger  continental  flood.  It  took 
indeed,  here,  a  form  and  character  of  its  own  ;  but 
it  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to  regard  it  as  isolated, 
or  as  simply  the  creation  of  a  few  able  and  resolute 
men.  That  was  what  it  seemed  to  many  contem- 
porary critics,  but  it  was  nothing  so  accidental  and 
arbitrary.  The  men  who  led  it  were,  in  a  sense, 
spokesmen  of  a  common  intellectual  and  religious 
tendency.  The  revival  they  effected  was  part  of  the 
general  European  reaction  against  the  Illumination 
and  the  Revolution.  The  reaction  was  not  simple 
but  complex,  at  once  religious,  intellectual  and 
political ;  a  recoil  of  the  conservative  spirit  from  the 
new  ideals  that  had  been  so  suddenly  translated  into 
portentous  realities.  And  it  was  marked  everywhere 
by  the  same  hatred  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  all 
its  works,  embodied  everywhere  the  same  hopes  and 
fears,  expressed  the  same  motives  and  ends.    On  the 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  95 


one  side  stood  the  revolutionary  theses,  the  rights  of 
reason  and  of  man,  the  watchwords  "  liberty,  equality, 
fraternity  "  ;  and  these  were  construed  not  in  their 
high  ideal  sense,  but  through  the  accidents  and 
atrocities,  die  terror  and  ruin  that  had  attended  the 
attempt  at  realization.  On  the  other  side  the 
reaction  emphasized  its  own  antitheses — the  rights 
of  the  community  before  those  of  the  individual ; 
the  rights  of  God  and  of  the  sovereigns,  spiritual  and 
civil,  He  had  appointed,  above  those  of  the  reason  and 
the  peoples  ;  authority  as  the  only  sufficient  basis 
of  order ;  and  order  as  the  condition  necessary  to 
the  highest  common  good.  But  not  satisfied  with 
opposing  antitheses  to  theses,  it  became  concrete 
and  practical ;  confronted  the  recent  revolutionary 
frenzy,  its  passion  for  iconoclasm  and  violent 
change,  with  an  idealized  mediaeval  history ;  at- 
tempted to  resuscitate  and  realize  its  ideals  ;  and 
in  order  to  this,  invested  the  church — which  was 
its  most  splendid  and  persistent  creation — with  the 
authority  that  was  held  to  be  alone  able  to  revive 
religion  and  create  order,  curb  and  turn  back  the 
loosened  and  lawless  forces  which  had  achieved 
the  revolt.  This  radical  contradiction,  ideal  and 
historical,  seemed  at  once  the  surest  and  the  most 
direct  way  to  victory ;  but  to  build  a  dam  across  a 
river  is  not  to  arrest  the  gathering  or  change  the 
course  of  its  waters,  as  the  men  who  secarely  pitch 
their  tents  in  the  shelter  of  the  dam  will  be  the  first 
to  experience. 


96 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


§  I.    The  Catholic  Revival  as  the  Counter-Revolution 

The  Catholic  revival  was  the  principal  phase  or 
feature  of  this  reaction,  and  the  literature  that  was 
its  most  operative  factor  may  be  described  as  the 
literature  of  the  new  Catholic  Apologetic.1  Our 
reference  to  its  distinctive  principles  and  work  must 
be  brief. 

i.  The  reaction  was  a  complex  movement,  at  once 
literary,  political,  religious.  In  literature  it  appeared 
as  Romanticism,  in  politics  as  legitimate  and  theo- 
cratic theory,  in  religion  as  Ultramontanism.  These 
three  were  but  different  phases  or  expressions  of  the 
one  spirit ;  and  they  may  be  said  to  represent  the 
organization  of  the  more  conservative  instincts 
against  the  new  agencies  of  progress  and  change. 
The  oneness  of  the  spirit  is  evident  from  the  ease 
with  which  its  phases  melted  or  passed  into  each 
other.    Romanticism  was  a  revolt  against  the  reign 

1  What  is  here  described  as  the  literature  of  the  new  Catholic 
Apologetic,  may  be  held  as  represented  by  the  following  : — 
Joseph  de  Maistre  :  L'Eglise  GalHcane  (Ed.  1882),  Les  Soirees 
de  Saint  Petcrsbourg  (Ed.  1874),  Du  Pape  (Ed.  1819).  De 
Bonald  :  Thc'orie  du  Pouvoir  Politique  et  Religieux  dans 
la  Socidte  Civile,  La  Legislation  Primitive  (Ed.  18 19). 
Chateaubriand  :  Genie  du  Christianisme  (Ed.  1802).  Lamen- 
nais  :  Essai  sur  V Indifference  en  Maliere  de  Religion  (Ed. 
1859).  This  literature  may  be  said  to  be  devoted  to  the 
exposition  of  the  function  of  Catholicism  in  an  age  of  revolution, 
and  so  represents  what  we  have  termed  the  new  Apologetic. 
Good  examples  of  the  older  are  ; — Houteville  :  La  Religion 
Chret.  protrude  par  les  fails  (1740).  3  vols.  Bergier  :  Traite 
Historique  et  Dogmatique  de  la  Vraie  Religion  (1780).    12  vols. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  97 

of  the  classical  and  rational  spirit  in  literature,  with 
its  intense  individualism,  its  severe  sense  of  justice 
and  of  personal  rights.  The  Romantic  movement 
rose  outside  Catholicism,  was  indeed  German  in  its 
origin  and  had  its  source  in  the  strenuous  Protestant 
soul  of  Herder  ;  but  it  received  full  development  at 
the  hands  of  men  like  the  Schlegels,  Tieck,  and 
Novalis,  who  loved  the  realm  of  the  imagination, 
and  hated  the  rationalism  that  had  expelled  miracle 
from  nature,  and  mystery  from  man,  making  the 
universe  the  home  of  prosaic  commonplace.  They 
disliked  the  cold  classicism  of  Goethe  and  even  the 
warmer  humanism  of  Schiller  ;  and  said  :  "  Poetry 
and  religion  are  one.  Man  needs  an  imagination  to 
interpret  the  universe,  and  he  is  happy  only  as  he 
has  a  universe  peopled  by  it  and  for  it.  These  three 
— poetry,  religion  and  imagination — are  one,  and  are 
never  found  singly.  When  man  has  most  religion 
he  has  also  most  poetry  and  is  fullest  of  imagination  ; 
and  the  times  when  he  had  these  three  divine  graces 
in  the  highest  degree  were  the  mediaeval."  And  so 
they  glorified  these  times,  edited  their  ballads  and 
romances,  praised  their  ideal  of  life  and  duty,  their 
bravery,  courtesy,  devotion  ;  their  indifference  to  the 
market  and  the  exchange,  their  loyalty  to  beauty 
and  honour  and  religion,  their  glorious  Gothic  archi- 
tecture, with  the  faith  it  at  once  embodied,  illustrated 
and  made  illustrious.  Admiration  for  the  past, 
though  it  was  a  past  that  was  a  pure  creature  of 
the  imagination,  easily  became  belief  in  the  church 

7 


98 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


that  claimed  it  as  its  own  ;  and  so  Romanticism  in 
men  like  Stolberg,  Friedrich  Schlegel,  and  Werner, 
passed  by  a  natural  gradation  into  Catholicism. 

The  reaction  in  politics  was  conducted  in  a  still 
more  courageous  and  thorough  spirit,  for  it  was 
directly  polemical,  a  guerre  a  out  ranee.  It  was  as 
specifically  French,  or,  let  us  say,  Latin,  in  origin 
and  form,  in  atmosphere  and  purpose,  as  Romanticism 
had  been  German.  Authority  must  be  made  divine 
if  the  rights  of  man  were  to  be  denied  and  his  reason 
subdued  and  governed  ;  but  the  dynastic  idea  had 
been  too  rudely  broken  to  be  capable  of  again  stand- 
ing up,  and  in  its  own  name  claiming  divine  authority. 
Its  hour  of  weakness  was  the  church's  opportunity  ; 
it  alone  had  braved  the  storm,  it  had  been  shaken 
but  it  had  stood,  manifestly,  not  in  its  own  strength, 
but  in  God's.  In  the  lurid  light  of  the  anarchy  Rome 
was  seen  to  have  a  mission ;  as  the  seat  and  home  of 
supreme  authority,  in  her  ancient  role  of  the  Eternal 
City,  universal,  immutable,  infallible,  she  could  stand 
forward  as  the  saviour  of  society,  now  gone  or  going 
to  destruction  for  want  of  its  most  Christian  kings. 
She  was  the  church  God  had  founded,  had  super- 
naturally  endowed  and  guided,  had  made  the  sole 
bearer  and  teacher  of  His  truth,  and  had  graced  and 
crowned  with  an  Infallible  Head.  Here  was  an 
authority  so  awful,  so  august,  and  so  inviolable  as 
to  be  alone  able  to  end  the  conflict  of  rival  rights, 
and  restore  order  by  enforcing  the  one  universal  duty 
—obedience.    If  divine  authority  was  to  rule  in  the 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  99 


State,  it  must  be  got  through  the  church.  Round 
her,  therefore,  the  broken  fragments  of  the  ancient 
order  crystallized ;  to  her  the  resolute  spirits  that 
headed  the  counter-revolution  rallied  with  sure  pre- 
science of  her  power,  ideal  and  actual ;  and  called 
upon  the  whole  army  of  her  supernatural  claims  and 
beliefs  and  sanctions  for  help  in  the  new  crusade. 
Joseph  de  Maistre  formulated  his  hierocratic  doctrine, 
making  the  Papal  at  once  guarantee  and  condition 
the  royal  power.  De  Bonald  wove  the  political  into 
the  religious  revelation,  ascribing  sole  sovereignty  to 
God,  but  building  upon  it  the  Pope's,  and  upon  his 
the  king's.  Chateaubriand  described  Christian  Rome 
as  being  for  the  modern  what  Pagan  Rome  had 
been  for  the  ancient  world — the  universal  bond  of 
nations,  instructing  in  duty,  defending  from  oppres- 
sion. Lamennais  argued  that  without  authority  there 
could  be  no  religion,  that  it  was  the  foundation  of  all 
society  and  morality,  and  that  it  alone  enfranchized 
man  by  making  him  obedient,  so  harmonizing  all 
intelligences  and  wills.  And  thus  the  Roman 
church,  as  the  supreme  authority,  was  conceived 
as  the  principle  of  order,  the  centre  of  political  as 
well  as  religious  stability  ;  the  only  divine  rights 
were  those  she  sanctioned  ;  in  her  strength  kings 
reigned,  and  through  obedience  to  her  man  was 
happy  and  God  honoured. 

2.  The  Counter-Revolution  thus  gave  Catholicism 
a  splendid  opportunity  for  a  new  Apologetic ;  sum- 
moned it  to  occupy  a  more  important  and  command- 


100 


CATHOLICISM 


ing  position  than  it  had  held  since  the  Renaissance. 
The  Apologetic  may  be  described  as  the  principle  of 
authority  done  into  a  philosophy  which  explained 
the  past  and  promised  to  save  the  present.  It  may 
be  said  to  have  consisted  of  two  parts,  a  theoretical 
and  an  historical — the  first  being  a  vindication  of 
authority  as  the  only  sure  basis  of  religion,  and,  con- 
sequently, the  only  solid  ground  and  guarantee  of 
order  ;  the  second  being  a  justification  of  the  Roman 
church  as  it  had  lived  and  acted  in  history. 

i.  The  theoretical  apologetic  was  on  the  positive 
side  a  philosophy  of  religion,  society,  and  history  ;  on 
the  negative,  an  absolute  contradiction  of  the  modern 
philosophies,  the  governing  principles  or  ideas  of  the 
modern  mind.  The  Apologists  saw  that  the  Revolu- 
tion had  not  been  an  accident,  but  a  logical  issue 
from  the  premisses  of  the  sixteenth  century  ;  i.e.,  it 
was  an  attempt  to  realize  a  political  ideal  correlative 
and  correspondent  to  the  ideal  of  religious  freedom. 
The  anarchy,  the  bloodshed,  the  social  misery  and 
ruin,  were  held  to  be  the  direct  result  of  the  movement 
which  Luther  had  instituted ;  to  this,  along  many  lines, 
it  had  been  inevitably  tending ;  in  this,  its  true 
character  stood  revealed.  What  appeared  before  the 
Revolution  as  innocent  abstractions,  or  speculations 
that  flattered  human  pride  in  the  degree  that  they 
exercised  human  reason,  appeared  after  it  as  disinte 
grative  forces  capable  of  doing  the  most  disastrous 
work.  It  was  not  a  question  of  Catholicism  against 
Protestantism,  but  of  Catholicism  against  the  modern 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  101 


movement  as  a  whole.  Humanity  must  be  turned 
back  in  its  course  three  centuries  that  society  might  be 
saved.  The  literary  revolt  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
the  religious  revolt  of  the  sixteenth,  the  philosophical 
systems  of  the  seventeenth,  the  political  revolution 
of  the  eighteenth,  were  all  parts  of  a  whole,  successive 
steps  in  the  dread  argument  that  had  been  fulfilling 
itself  in  history.  To  deal  with  this  in  the  most 
radical  way,  modern  philosophy,  as  supplying  the 
principles  and  premisses,  was  fiercely  attacked.  It 
was  not  necessary  that  it  should  be  understood  or  be 
treated  with  justice  and  truth ;  it  was  only  necessary 
that  it  should  be  overturned  and  deprived  of  all  its 
spoils.  De  Maistre,  with  what  in  him  may  have  been 
a  holy  fury,  but  what  in  more  worldly  men  would 
have  been  delirious  unveracity,  assailed  both  the 
philosophers  and  their  philosophies,  discrediting  the 
systems  through  their  authors.  Bacon  was  a  pre- 
sumptuous and  profane  scientific  charlatan,  whose 
bad  philosophy  was  the  fit  expression  of  his  bad 
morality.  "  Contempt  of  Locke  was  the  beginning 
of  knowledge." 1  Hume  "  was  perhaps  the  most 
dangerous  and  the  guiltiest  of  all  those  baleful 
writers  who  will  for  ever  accuse  the  last  century 
before  posterity." 2  Voltaire  "was  a  man  Paris 
crowned,  but  Sodom  would  have  banished." 3  Even 
Herder  was  described  as  "  the  genteel  (Jiomiete) 
comedian  who  preached  the  gospel  in  the  pulpit 


1  Soirtes,  vol.  i.,  p.  442.         -  Ibid.,  p.  403.         3  Ibid.,  p.  243. 


102 


CA  THOLICISM 


and  pantheism  in  his  writings."  1  Lamennais  argued 
that  the  philosophies  and  the  heresies  had  one  prin- 
ciple, "  la  souverainete  de  la  raison  humaine,"  the 
end  whereof  was  universal  disbelief. 2  Admit  it,  and 
from  the  end  there  was  no  escape ;  the  inevitable 
way  was  from  heresy  to  deism,  from  deism  to 
atheism,  from  atheism  to  universal  scepticism. 
Hence,  by  an  exhaustive  process,  the  necessary 
conclusion  was  reached  :  we  must  have  authority  if 
we  are  to  have  faith  ;  the  true  religion  is  that  which 
rests  on  the  greatest  visible  authority,  which  from 
sheer  lack  of  actual  or  possible  claimants  can  be  no 
other  than  Rome.  The  variations  of  philosophers  as 
of  Protestants  proved  their  want  of  truth  ;  the  con- 
sistencies and  harmonies  of  Catholics  proved  their 
possession  of  it.  Authority  being  the  creative  and 
fundamental  principle  in  religion,  to  despise  or  deny 
it  was  sin — order  was  Heaven's  first  law ;  contempt 
of  authority  was  man's  first  disobedience.  The 
systems  that  denied  it  were  not  simply  false,  they 
were  evil ;  at  once  causes  and  fruits  of  sin.  Of  sin 
and  its  inexorable  penalties,  the  new  Apologetic  had 
much  to  say  ;  sin  explained  the  revolt,  the  Revolution 
illustrated  the  penalty.  To  end  the  revolt  the  church 
must  triumph  ;  and  its  victory  would  be  the  creation, 
not  of  religion  only,  but  of  order,  of  a  stable,  con- 
tented, happy  society.  But,  as  Lamennais  was  des- 
tined later  fatefully  to  discover,  if  authority  was  to 


1  Sciries,  vol.i  .p.  258.  ■  Essai sur  V lndiffereT>.ce,\o\,  iv.,  pp.  242-3. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  103 


rule  at  all,  it  must  rule  everywhere,  in  both  Church 
and  State  ;  if  freedom  reigned  in  either,  it  would 
reign  in  both.  So  de  Maistre  saw  and  victoriously 
argued  :  both  authorities  are  of  God,  but  the  spiritual 
is  the  higher  ;  the  king's  does  not  qualify  the  Pope's, 
but  the  Pope's  limits  the  king's.  Power  may  be 
limited  from  above,  but  not  from  below  ;  the  subjects 
may  not  judge  the  sovereign,  or  impose  conditions  on 
him,  but  he  may  be  judged  by  the  Pope,  and  the 
judge  of  the  Pope  is  God.  Absolute  authority  thus, 
as  political,  personified  in  the  king,  confronted  revolu- 
tion ;  and  as  spiritual,  personified  in  the  Pope,  con- 
fronted the  Protestant  reason  ;  and  by  its  strength 
religion  was  to  be  saved,  society  re-constituted,  order 
created,  and  humanity  made  obedient  to  God. 

ii.  But  it  was  not  enough  to  be  critical  and  theo- 
retical ;  it  was  no  less  necessary  to  show  the  fine 
correspondence  of  the  theory  with  history,  the 
speculation  with  fact.  And  so  the  discussion  be- 
came historical ;  the  church  was  exhibited  as  the 
maker  of  civilization,  the  mother  of  the  arts  and 
sciences,  the  creator  of  the  humanities,  the  enemy 
of  vice,  the  nurse  of  virtue,  the  home  of  all  the 
graces.  When  the  Roman  empire  fell  the  church 
mitigated  the  miseries,  lessened  the  evils,  conserved 
the  good  that  but  for  her  would  have  perished  in 
the  ruins.  When  the  young  peoples  came  pouring 
into  the  older  states,  she  received  them  into  her 
bosom,  tamed  them,  organized  their  energies,  built 
them  into  a  new  order  and  new  civilization.  She 


io4 


CA  TIIOLICISM 


protected  its  tender  years  ;  hers  was  the  arm  which 
turned  back  the  Moor,  the  Saracen,  and  the  Turk. 
In  her  the  conquered  peoples  had  their  true  and 
strongest  friend  ;  the  conquerors,  a  common  sovereign 
who  ruled  their  fierce  wills  into  obedience  and  hu- 
manity. The  church  united  the  divided  nations, 
created  out  of  a  multitude  of  turbulent  tribes  a 
brotherhood  of  peoples,  made  the  hostile  kingdoms 
become  a  single  Christendom.  Modern  Europe 
without  the  church  were  inconceivable ;  whatever 
most  distinguishes  her,  whatever  she  most  admires, 
she  owes  to  the  church.  The  church  has  put  her 
stamp  on  the  literature  of  every  modern  people  ; 
the  drama  rose  out  of  her  miracle  plays  ;  it  was 
her  faith  that  bade  the  first  and  greatest  of  modern 
epics  live,  and  that  will  not  let  it  die.  Art  was 
her  peculiar  creation  ;  she  inspired  the  genius  of 
the  builder,  and  he  built  the  large  faith  he  lived 
by  into  cathedral  and  monastery ;  her  vivid  and 
fruitful  imagination  formed  the  painter,  and  the 
wondrous  beauty  of  his  work  but  witnesses  to  the 
sublimity  of  her  spirit  and  the  truth  of  her  beliefs. 
Her  mysteries,  the  sacraments,  and  miracles  that 
offend  the  prosaic  rationalism  of  a  godless  age,  dis- 
close their  true  significance,  their  power  at  once 
to  awe,  to  humble,  and  to  uplift,  when  seen  reflected 
in  the  mirror  of  mediaeval  art.  Science,  too,  the 
church  had  made  ;  her  sons  loved,  and  cultivated, 
and  enlarged  it  when  the  world  was  dark,  and  kings 
and  nobles  lived  but  for   war  and  plunder.  All 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  IO5 


beneficent  and  ameliorative  agencies  were  of  her 
making :  hospitals,  charities,  schools,  colleges,  the 
laws  that  shielded  the  serf  from  the  savagery  of  his 
master.  For  all  this,  and  kindred  work,  her  very 
constitution  qualified  her.  The  clergy  had  no  land, 
no  home,  no  worldly  affections,  no  secular  care, 
were  separated  to  her  service,  consecrated  wholly 
to  her  ends,  which  were  those  of  man's  highest  good. 
Her  very  organization  showed  her  to  be  the  bearer 
and  organ  of  divine  truth,  throughout  adapted  to 
secure  its  recognition  and  realization  among  men. 
For  above  all  stood  the  supreme  Pontiff,  the  spiritual 
Sovereign,  source  of  unity,  law,  order,  directing  the 
energies,  formulating  the  judgments,  determining  the 
faith  of  the  church  ;  so  much  the  Vicar  of  God  as 
to  be  His  audible  voice ;  gifted  with  speech  that 
he  might  control  kings  and  command  peoples,  main- 
tain religion,  and  compel  obedience.  What  the 
church  had  been  the  church  would  continue  to  be  ; 
she  had  saved  Europe  when  Rome  perished,  and 
would  save  it  again  even  though  it  were  out  of 
the  very  jaws  of  the  destroyer. 

3.  In  this  outline  the  hierocratic  Apologetic  is 
briefly  but  not  unfairly  or  inaccurately  represented. 
The  historical  part  was  at  once  confirmatory  and 
illustrative  of  the  theoretical.  And  so  far  as  it  was 
true  to  history  it  did  a  needed  service.  It  did  not 
indeed  speak  the  whole  truth,  nay,  it  left  much  of 
the  truth  unspoken.  Its  past  was  largely  a  creation 
of  the  imagination  ;  or  a  reality  so  highly  idealized 


CATHOLICISM 


as  to  have  become  the  likeness  of  a  vision.  One 
thing  indeed  must  not  be  forgotten,  viz.,  that  the 
objective  and  historical  mode  of  viewing  and  re- 
presenting the  church  and  its  work  in  the  Middle 
Ages  rose  outside  Catholicism  ;  was  due  to  liberal 
and  scientific  thought,  not  to  ecclesiastical  and 
polemical.  To  it,  looking  only  from  the  historical 
point  of  view,  it  seemed  hardly  possible  to  exaggerate 
the  obligations  of  Europe  to  Catholicism.  The 
Catholic  church  in  the  Middle  Ages  had  nobly 
served  humanity  ;  moderated  for  the  old  world  the 
miseries  of  dissolution,  moderated  for  the  new  the 
perhaps  still  greater  miseries  of  organization  and 
evolution.  But  suppose  we  grant,  not  the  vigorously 
historical  and  scientific  view  of  the  mediaeval  church, 
but  the  highly  imaginative  and  richly  coloured 
picture  of  those  Catholic  romances,  what  then  ?  Why, 
this  justice  to  mediaeval  must  not  make  us  unjust 
to  modern  history.  The  question  is,  not  what  the 
Catholic  church  had  done  in  the  early  or  middle 
centuries,  but  what  it  has  done  in  the  modern  world. 
An  organization  that  had  served  and  saved  a  society 
penetrated  with  pagan  ideas,  may  be  little  qualified 
to  serve  a  society  possessed  and  moved  by  Christian 
ideals.  Laws  good  for  childhood  may  be  bad  for 
manhood  ;  what  makes  a  man  of  a  child  is  excellent, 
but  what  makes  a  child  of  a  man  is  evil.  The 
Apologists  were  as  weak  in  the  modern  as  they 
were  strong  in  the  mediaeval  question.  In  the  one 
case,  they  were  eloquent  and  philosophic  about  the 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  IOJ 


church  and  its  work ;  in  the  other,  they  were  re- 
proachful and  severe  concerning  the  pride  and 
wickedness  of  man,  though  he  was  no  prouder  or 
more  wicked  than  the  men  who  had  been  in  either 
pagan  or  mediaeval  times.  They  did  not  see  that 
there  was  an  absolute  change  in  the  conditions  ;  in 
the  earlier  period  it  was  the  secular  empire  that 
had  broken  down,  but  in  the  later  the  breakdown  was 
in  the  spiritual.  In  the  days  of  the  decadence  of 
imperial  Rome  and  in  those  of  the  barbarian  invasions 
and  the  formation  of  the  European  States,  the  church 
had  indeed  been  an  ameliorative  agency  and  an  archi- 
tectonic power  ;  but  in  the  days  of  the  Reformation 
and  the  Revolution  it  was  the  church  that  had 
fallen  into  feebleness  and  become  a  disintegrative 
force.  The  Europe  she  claimed  to  be  alone  able 
to  reorganize  and  restore,  was  the  very  Europe 
that  her  own  hands  had  disorganized.  Chaos  had 
come  into  the  world  because  she  had  not  been 
able  to  govern  it.  She  was  in  the  place  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  while  the  modern  spirit  was  claim- 
ing to  occupy  the  place  that  had  once  been  hers. 
The  Pope  was  the  new  Julian  ;  de  Maistre  the 
new  Libanius.  As  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  the 
very  revolt  of  the  intellect  was  the  gravest  possible 
reflection  on  the  capacity  of  the  church.  The  in- 
tellect had  been  in  subjection  for  centuries  ;  to  allow 
it  to  escape  implied  infirmity  in  the  ruler,  deficiency 
in  wisdom,  inefficiency  of  energy  and  will.  The 
claim  of  infallibility  is  a  tremendous  claim,  not  be- 


io8 


CA  TIIOLICISM 


cause  of  what  it  requires  from  man,  but  because 
of  what  it  demands  in  and  from  the  church.  In- 
fallibility in  truth  is  significant  when  conjoined  with 
infallibility  in  wisdom  ;  but  the  one  without  the  other 
is  significant  only  of  the  incapacity  which  springs  from 
uncorrelated  faculties.  And  when  infallibility  in  mat- 
ters of  opinion  is  conjoined  with  the  most  pitiful 
fallibility  in  conduct,  the  situation  becomes  worse 
than  absurd.  To  be  under  an  authority  so  ill- 
balanced  and  so  badly  guided  where  guidance  is  most 
necessary,  is  like  being  under  a  creator,  almighty 
but  not  all-wise  ;  to  possess  it  is,  as  it  were,  to  have 
the  mechanical  gift,  the  skill  to  make  instruments  ; 
but  not  the  political,  the  power  to  handle  and  govern 
men.  For  if  the  revolt  of  the  sixteenth  century 
were  a  sin,  the  men  who  achieved  it  were  not  the 
only  sinners — still  guiltier  was  the  church  that  made 
it  possible,  and  allowed  it  to  become  actual.  During 
centuries  she  had  been  supreme ;  hers  had  been 
the  hands  that  made  the  men,  hers  the  mind  that 
made  Europe  ;  and  if  the  issue  of  all  her  doings 
and  endeavours  were  the  revolt,  could  she  be  guilt- 
less, or  as  wise  as  she  must  be  to  make  her  in- 
fallibility of  any  avail,  or  make  it  anything  more  than 
an  ability  to  do  great  things  if  she  only  knew  how  ? 

But  more  :  why  had  the  Revolution  happened  ? 
and  why  amid  so  much  hideous  terror  and  blood  ? 
Modern  philosophy  was  not  altogether  or  alone  to 
blame ;  neither  was  suppressed  and  expatriated 
Protestantism.     The    men   were    sons  of  France, 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  IO9 


France  was  the  eldest  son  of  the  church,  and  the 
son  ruled  as  the  church  had  taught  him,  with  results 
dreadful  to  both.  The  responsibility  for  the  horrors 
of  the  Revolution  does  not  lie  with  its  principles, 
but  with  its  causes  ;  and  who  will  now  say  that  to 
these  causes  the  church  did  not  powerfully  con- 
tribute ?  But  if  she  were  a  contributary  cause,  what 
becomes  of  her  claim  to  the  sole  ability  to  organize 
and  order  the  modern,  because  she  had  ordered 
and  organized  the  mediaeval  world  ?  To  be  a  cause 
of  the  evil  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  guarantee- 
ing the  possession  of  the  power  to  cure  it.  The 
philosophy  of  history  is  guided  in  its  judgments  by 
rigorous  and  impartial  principles.  It  cannot,  merely 
in  the  interest  of  dogma  or  sect,  accord  or  deny 
honour  to  a  church  ;  but  the  honour  it  accords  at 
one  period  may  be  changed  into  deepest  blame  at 
another.  The  very  reasons  that  lead  it  to  praise 
the  work  and  services  of  early  and  mediaeval 
Catholicism,  compel  it  to  hold  the  later  Catholicism 
mainly  responsible  for  evils  the  Revolution  was 
needed  to  cure. 

If  the  historical  doctrine  was  no  good  philosophy 
of  history,  still  less  was  the  theoretical  a  good 
philosophy  of  religion.  To  base  religion  on  author- 
ity is  the  most  fatal  of  all  scepticisms.  The  argu- 
ments that  prove  it,  prove  man  possessed  of  an 
inherent  and  ineradicable  atheism  of  nature.  But 
what  is  to  be  said  on  this  point  can  better  be  said 
later  on.    Enough  to  remark  here,  the  new  Apolo- 


I  10 


CA  THOLICISM 


getic  was  an  apologetic  for  Catholicism,  not  for 
Christianity.  Its  interest  was  the  church,  not  the 
religion,  at  least  the  religion  only  so  far  as  identical 
or  co-extensive  with  the  church.  This  gave  to  it 
its  two  most  distinctive  characteristics  —  it  was 
political  or  sociological  and  historical.  It  was  a 
theory  of  society  and  the  State  illustrated  by  specific 
periods  and  events  in  history.  It  was  a  speculation 
as  to  the  best  methods  for  the  creation  and  main- 
tenance of  order.  De  Maistre,  as  has  been  well 
said,  was  a  publicist,  and  looked  at  the  whole  matter 
from  the  publicist's  point  of  view.  He  was  a  sort 
of  ecclesiasticized  Hobbes,  with  the  strength,  courage, 
keenness,  directness,  and,  we  may  add,  coarseness 
of  the  original ;  only  with  the  Pope  substituted  for 
the  king.  But  even  so,  the  hierocratic  system  had 
its  place,  and  did  a  not  unneeded  or  ignoble  work. 
It  did  for  the  Papacy  what  Hobbes  had  done  for  the 
Monarchy,  formulated  a  theory  of  government  where 
order  was  created  by  absolute  authority  being  given 
to  the  one,  and  absolute  subjection  to  the  many. 
Both  marked  the  reaction  that  succeeded  revolu- 
tion, though  in  the  one  case  the  revolution  was 
religious,  an  attempted  reign  of  the  saints  ;  in  the 
other  secular,  an  attempted  reign  of  reason.  It  was 
no  less  characteristic  that  the  theory  opposed  to 
the  religious  revolution  based  authority  on  might, 
but  the  theory  opposed  to  the  secular  based  might  on 
authority.  Hobbes'  king  created  the  church,  but  de 
Maistre's  church  created  the   king.     Yet  each  is 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  HI 


explained  by  its  occasion.  The  Restoration  would 
have  been  incomplete  without  the  Leviathan  ;  the 
Catholic  revival  and  the  Counter-revolution  would 
have  lacked  theoretical  justification  without  Ultra- 
montanism. 

§  II.  The  English  Counterpart  of  the  Continental 
Revival 

i.  We  must  now  pass  from  the  Continental  to 
the  English  Catholic  movement.  The  conditions 
in  the  two  cases  were  altogether  different.  In 
France  the  Revolution  had  been  swift,  imperious, 
destructive  ;  but  in  England  the  genius  of  the  people, 
their  prosaic  sagacity  and  insular  pride,  sobered 
and  disciplined  by  the  long  struggle  towards  com- 
pleter freedom,  first  held  it  at  bay,  then  graduated 
its  approach,  and,  at  last,  peacefully  and  legally 
accomplished  it.  Hence  the  Catholic  revival  could 
not  appear  here  as  the  counter-revolution,  as  the 
source  and  ground  of  order  to  a  disordered  State  ; 
for  order  reigned,  and  our  very  revolutions  had 
increased  rather  than  disturbed  it.  Indeed,  our  com- 
bined freedom  and  order  had  so  perplexed  and 
bewildered  the  hierocratic  theorists,  that  de  Bonald 
calmly  dismissed  from  consideration  the  English 
people,  because  they  were,  "  mainly  on  account  of 
their  defects,  by  far  the  most  backward  of  civilized 
peoples,"  and  de  Maistre  described  our  constitution 
as  "  an  insular  peculiarity  utterly  unworthy  of  imita- 
tion." But  even  here  the  forces  of  change  were  active, 
and  their  movement  was  the  more  resistless  that  it 


112 


CATHOLICISM 


was  so  regulated  and,  as  it  were,  so  constitutional. 
These  forces  were  not  simply  in  the  air  but  im- 
manent in  the  English  nature,  embedded  in  the 
customs  and  habits,  laws  and  institutions,  mind  and 
method  of  the  people.  They  were  forces  universal 
and  supreme ;  governing  the  men  who  governed. 
While  they  appeared  political,  they  were  really 
religious ;  they  threatened  the  Church  even  more 
than  the  State  ;  they  questioned  the  accepted  prin- 
ciples, doctrines,  facts,  and  authorities  in  religion, 
much  more  severely  than  the  ancient  and  established 
customs  and  methods  in  politics.  In  their  collective 
and  corporate  character  these  forces  constituted 
what  was  termed  "  Liberalism,"  which  was  the  milder 
but  more  fatal  English  equivalent  for  the  fiercer  but 
less  insidious  Gallican  "  Revolution."  If,  then,  they 
were  held  to  be  forces  mischievous  in  character, 
evil  in  tendency,  and  ruinous  in  result,  to  resist 
them  was  a  most  manifest  and  absolute  duty.  But 
how  ?  The  Sovereign  could  not,  for  the  Sovereign 
was  simply  the  greatest  subject  in  the  realm,  the 
creation  of  its  laws ;  nor  could  the  Parliament,  for 
it  was  but  the  nation  in  Council ;  nor  could  the 
church,  for  the  church  was  the  people's,  rather  than 
the  people  the  church's.  There  was  nothing  then 
to  hinder  the  people,  were  they  so  minded,  from 
going  so  far  wrong  as  even  to  abolish  the  law  and 
worship  of  God.  It  was  necessary,  therefore,  to  dis- 
cover an  authority  able  to  bridle  and  govern  the 
forces  of  change.    God  was  the  supreme  authority ; 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT    1 13 


the  church  in  which  He  lived  and  through  which 
He  worked  was  His  visible  presence  ;  in  it,  there- 
fore, the  Divine  authority  must  dwell.  Of  this 
the  English  people  had  hitherto  been  negligent  or 
unconscious  ;  only  here  and  there  a  Catholic  divine 
had  understood  and  believed ;  but  once  make  it 
thoroughly  evident,  and  men,  no  longer  ignorantly 
free  to  believe  and  worship  as  they  pleased,  will 
feel  bound  to  hold  the  faith  and  obey  the  law  of  God. 

This  was,  in  brief,  the  genesis  of  the  Anglican 
movement.  While  formally  and  incidentally  affected 
by  many  collateral  influences — the  romances  of 
Scott,  which  supplied  it  with  an  idealized  past,  and 
inspired  the  passion  still  further  to  idealize  it ;  the 
speculation  of  Coleridge,  which  touched  it  with 
mysticism,  and  imparted,  in  some  degree,  the  gift 
of  spiritual  insight ;  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth,  which 
revealed  the  symbolical  and  sacramental  significance 
of  common  things — yet  it  was  essentially  an  en- 
deavour, in  a  period  when  political  change  threatened 
to  affect  religious  institutions,  to  find  a  stable  re- 
ligious ground  on  which  to  build  the  faith,  an  ab- 
solute authority  by  which  to  govern  the  life,  first  of 
the  individual,  next  of  the  nation.  It  assumed  that 
the  truth  of  God  did  not  live  in  the  common  reason, 
or  His  authority  reign  in  the  collective  conscience  ; 
and  that,  without  a  special  organ  or  vehicle  for  their 
transmission  and  embodiment,  they  could  not  con- 
tinue to  live  and  reign  at  all.  It  thought  that  if 
the  State  touched  even  the  abuses  of  the  church, 

8 


ii4 


CATHOLICISM 


it  would  act  profanely  ;  and  it  desired  therefore  to 
make  the  church  inviolable  by  the  State.  What 
was  needed  to  set  a  limit  to  the  forces  of  encroach- 
ment and  aggression  was  an  authority — valid,  visible, 
supreme.  To  be  supreme,  it  must  be  religious  ;  to 
be  visible,  it  must  be  a  realized  polity  or  constituted 
society ;  to  be  valid,  it  must  have  independent  legis- 
lative and  efficient  executive  powers.  With  these 
attributes  the  Anglican  church  was  invested,  but 
they  were  too  immense  for  her  ;  she  bent  and  failed 
beneath  the  burden.  Her  weakness  but  set  off  the 
strength  of  Catholicism.  What  the  one  church 
could  not  bear,  was  the  very  vital  principle  of  the 
other ;  she  had  for  centuries  been  testifying  her 
possession  of  it  to  the  perverse  and  incredulous 
English  people.  The  ancient  cause  of  offence  be- 
came the  new  feature  of  commendation  ;  and  those 
who  felt  that  they  could  not  believe  and  be  Christian 
without  authority,  found  in  her  bosom  the  authority 
they  needed. 

2.  The  English  Catholic  movement,  then,  was 
distinguished  from  the  Continental  by  its  being  more 
personal  and  religious  in  character,  aiming  at  reform 
and  resistance  rather  than  counter-revolution.  The 
publicist  view  did  not  exist  here ;  the  conditions  did 
not  call  for  it.  But  what  national  events  occasioned 
in  France,  personal  experiences  accomplished  in 
England,  though  they  were  experiences  of  disquiet 
in  the  face  of  forces  which  Europe  had  learned  to 
dread.    Still  the  arena  of  action  and  change  was 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  115 


mainly  subjective,  in  minds  that  had  feared  the  un- 
settling influence  of  the  critical  and  progressive  ten- 
dencies then  active,  and  were  alarmed  for  religion 
in  the  degree  that  they  loved  it.  The  revolution 
that  was  dreaded  was  internal,  in  the  region  of 
thought  and  belief.  Superficial  readers  of  the 
Apologia  have  wondered  at  the  determinative 
influence  attributed  to  such  incidents  as  the  Jeru- 
salem Bishopric ;  but,  in  truth,  nothing  could  be 
more  just  than  the  place  assigned  to  it,  or  more 
impressive  and  significant.  It  was  not  only  a  fact 
fatal  to  a  theory ;  but  Newman's  mind  had  become 
hyper-sensitive,  it  had  lost  the  sense  of  proportion  ; 
little  things  troubled  even  more  than  large  ;  and  his 
doctrine  of  the  church  had  become  so  nearly  equiva- 
lent to  the  truth  of  religion,  that  what  touched  the 
one  seemed  to  threaten  the  other  with  ruin  and 
disaster.  It  had  become  a  matter  of  personal  neces- 
sity that  he  should  find  an  immutable  and  infallible 
church,  in  order  that  he  might  have  a  stable  and 
true  religion.  This  need  was  altogether  distinctive 
of  him  and  the  men  he  moved,  and  belongs  rather 
to  their  natural  history  than  to  the  nation's.  It  did 
not  rise  out  of  the  native  conservatism  of  the  English 
people,  seeking  to  find  the  religious  principle  or  con- 
stitutional doctrine  that  could  best  resist  the  tides 
of  revolutionary  thought  and  action  ;  but  it  rose  In 
the  spirits  and  out  of  the  experiences  of  men  who 
believed  that  religion  could  not  be  saved,  either  for 
themselves  or  the  people,  unless  in  the  strength  of 


n6 


CA  THOLICISM 


a  greater  and  more  efficient  authority  than  any  their 
church  knew  or  could  allow.  Hence  the  English 
Catholic  movement  proceeded  from  and  expressed 
the  religious  necessities  of  persons,  not  the  needs  of 
the  State  or  the  aspirations  of  the  people.  And 
what  it  was,  it  is — a  thoroughly  individual  movement, 
with  less  national  promise  now  than  it  had  at  first ; 
and,  what  we  may  term  its  fundamental  principle — 
an  organized  authority  as  the  basis  of  Religion,  and 
this  authority  as  embodied  in  the  infallible  church 
of  Rome — was  formulated  to  satisfy  these  individual 
needs.  What  we  have  now  to  consider  is  the  validity 
and  constructive  value  of  this  principle,  as  repre- 
sented and  interpreted  by  modern  English,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  Continental,  Catholicism. 

§  III.    Philosophical  Scepticism  as  the  Apology  for 
Ecclesiastical  A  nthority 
I.  Cardinal  Newman1  is  here,  beyond  question,  the 

1  If  the  subject  had  been  Apologetics  by  English  Catholics, 
instead  of,  as  it  really  is,  English  Catholicism  as  an  Apologetic, 
there  are  many  men  I  should  have  liked  gratefully  to  review, 
such  as  Cardinal  Wiseman,  Dr.  Ward,  Father  Dalgairns,  a 
thinker  of  exquisite  subtlety  and  refinement,  Mr.  St.  George 
Mivart,  Father  Harper,  and  others  hardly  less  worthy  of 
regard.  The  extensive  work  of  the  last,  The  Metaphysics  oj 
the  School  (Macmillan  &  Co.,  3  vols.,  1879-84),  deserves  a 
more  careful  criticism  than  it  has  yet  received.  Its  worth  for 
the  historical  student  is  considerable :  but  its  polemical,  critical, 
and  constructive  parts,  though  most  painstaking  and  laborious, 
are  of  another  order  and  quality  than  the  expository.  Thomas 
Aquinas  is  indeed  more  real  and  intelligible  in  his  own  Latin 
than  in  any  English  exposition.    He  is  in  the  one  case  a  living 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  IJ7 


representative  man,  and  so  it  is  through  him  that  we 
must  construe  and  criticise  the  principle.  Its  ac- 
ceptance was  a  necessity  to  his  own  faith ;  he  has 
done  more  than  any  living  man  to  make  it  a  neces- 
sity to  the  faith  of  others.  He  is  here  regarded 
under  only  one  aspect,  as  the  disciple  and  defender 
of  Roman  Catholic  authority,  that  he  may  be  the 
better  and  more  victorious  a  Christian  Apologist. 
We  have  the  right  so  to  regard  him.  Disciples  have 
represented  him  as  the  foremost  apologist  of  the 
day  ;  his  Apologia  was  the  recognition  of  his  own 
significance,  the  history  was  the  justification  of  "  his 
religious  opinions."  There  is  no  man  living  whose 
works  are  so  thoroughly  autobiographical ;  they  are 
but  various  illustrations  of  his  own   principle — in 

teacher,  handling  relevant  problems,  holding  his  own  place  in 
history,  determining  much  both  of  the  form  and  matter  of  later 
thought ;  but  in  the  other  case  he  is  only  an  adapted  teacher, 
not  very  capable  of  the  sort  of  adaptation  he  has  received, 
rather  lustily  resisting  it,  justly  refusing  to  be  forced  to  shed 
light  on  problems  that  had  not  emerged  in  his  own  day. 
Descartes,  Hume,  and  Kant  are  not  to  be  so  answered  and 
superseded  ;  their  questions  underlie  the  "  Metaphysics  of  the 
School,"  determining  alike  their  possibility  and  worth,  and 
Father  Harper's  criticisms  are  incidental  and  verbal  rather  than 
material  and  real.  He  must  go  to  work  in  a  more  radical 
fashion,  both  in  the  criticism  of  modern  philosophy  and  the 
adaptation  of  the  schoolman,  before  he  can  effect  either  the  dis- 
placement of  the  one  or  the  substitution  of  the  other.  Yet  we 
gladly  acknowledge  that  the  increased  attention,  so  largely  due 
to  the  present  Pope,  which  has  now  for  many  years  been  paid  in 
Catholic  schools  to  Thomas  Aquinas  is  a  most  hopeful  sign  for 
Catholicism. 


CATHOLICISM 


religious  inquiry  egotism  may  be  true  modesty.1 
There  is  as  much  autobiography  in,  to  mention  no 
others,  the  Sermons,  the  Discourses  to  Mixed  Con- 
gregations, the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine, 
Present  Position  of  Catholics  in  England,  the  Letters 
to  Dr.  Pusey  and  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  and  the 
Grammar  of  Assent,  as  in  the  Apologia.  Indeed,  the 
Apologia  loses  half  its  significance  when  read  alone  ; 
it  needs  to  be  studied  in  the  light  of  the  works,  tracts, 
essays,  lectures,  histories  and  treatises,  chronologi- 
cally arranged.  Conscious  revelation  of  self,  even 
when  most  careful  and  scrupulous,  hides  even  more 
than  it  reveals  ;  it  is  the  unconscious  and  undesigned 
that  testify  more  truly  of  a  man.  Newman  was 
always  supremely  conscious  of  two  beings — God  and 
himself — and  his  works  are  a  history  of  his  successive 
attempts  to  determine  and  adjust  the  relations  be- 
tween these  two.  This  is  significant ;  in  the  heart 
of  this  chief  of  English  Catholics  there  is  an  in- 
tense individualism — indeed,  it  was  the  strength  of 
his  individualism  that  made  a  Catholic  of  him.  The 
Apologia  is  the  history  of  an  individual  mind  ;  the 
Grammar  of  Assent  is  its  dialectic — i.e.,  the  transla- 
tion of  the  causes  and  course  of  the  changes  which 
the  history  records,  into  logical  forms  and  reasoned 
processes.  But  this  exactly  defines  the  worth  and 
describes  the  range  of  Newman's  apologetic  work 
— it  is  distinctively  individual — first  explicative  of 

1  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  384  (fifth  ed.).  Cf.  Mr.  Lilly's 
Ancient  Religion  and  Modem  Thought  p.  48. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     1 10. 


himself,  and  then  cogent  for  men  who  start  with  his 
ecclesiastical  assumptions  and  are  troubled  with  his 
spiritual  experiences  and  perplexities  ;  not  for  those 
outside  the  churches,  seeking  for  a  reasoned  and  a 
reasonable  belief. 

In  order  to  a  radical  and  just  discussion,  it  will  be 
necessary  to  discover,  if  possible,  Newman's  ultimate 
ideas  or  the  regulative  principles  of  his  thought";  for 
they  determine  not  only  his  ratiocination,  but  his 
mode  of  viewing  things,  and  the  kind  and  quality  of 
the  arguments  that  weigh  with  him.  He  is  by  nature 
a  poet,  by  necessity  rather  than  choice  a  meta- 
physician and  historian.  Truth  finds  him  through 
the  imagination,  is  real  only  as  it  comes  to  him  in 
image  and  breathing  form,  a  being  instinct  with  life. 
And  so  he  hates  the  abstract  and  loves  the  concrete  ; 
a  truth  grows  real  to  him  only  when  it  is  so  em- 
bodied as  to  speak  to  the  imagination  and  fill  it.  He 
is  ill  at  ease  when  the  discussion  carries  him  into  the 
region  of  abstract  principles  ;  he  is  happy  only  when 
he  can  handle  what  his  intellect  conceives  to  be  the 
actual.  For  the  same  reason  he  is  averse  to  historical 
criticism.  No  man  had  ever  less  of  the  analytical 
and  judicial  spirit,  that  must  search  and  sift  and 
separate  till  the  original  and  unadorned  fact  be 
found.  He  can  well  understand  the  love  that 
idealizes  the  past ;  he  cannot  so  well  understand  the 
love  that  is  so  bent  on  the  truth  as  to  be  able  to 
analyze  and  sacrifice  the  dearest  traditions  and  be- 
liefs to  reach  it.    He  loves  the  past  which  fills  and 


120 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


satisfies  the  imagination,  not  the  one  dissected  and 
disclosed  by  the  critical  reason.  Now,  these  charac- 
teristics make  it  a  difficult,  almost  a  cruel,  thing  to 
attempt  to  reach  the  ultimate  principles  that  govern 
his  thought.  His  is  a  mind  to  be  handled  as  he 
loves  to  handle  things,  imaginatively  and  in  the 
concrete,  not  coldly  analyzed  ;  but  unless  his  govern- 
ing ideas  are  reached,  neither  his  mind  nor  his 
method  can  be  understood. 

2.  The  true  starting-point  for  the  critical  analysis 
and  appraisement  of  Newman's  apologetic  work  is 
the  famous  passage — 

"  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  no  medium,  in 
true  philosophy,  between  Atheism  and  Catholicity,  and  that  a 
perfectly  consistent  mind,  under  those  circumstances  in  which 
it  finds  itself  here  below,  must  embrace  either  the  one  or  the 
other.  And  I  hold  this  still :  I  am  a  Catholic  by  virtue  of 
my  believing  in  a  God  ;  and  if  I  am  asked  why  I  believe  in 
a  God,  I  answer  that  it  is  because  I  believe  in  myself,  for  I 
feel  it  impossible  to  believe  in  my  own  existence  (and  of  that 
fact  I  am  quite  sure)  without  believing  also  in  the  existence  of 
Him,  who  lives  as  a  Personal,  All-seeing,  All-judging  Being  in 
my  conscience."  1 

The  points  here  noteworthy  are — (i)  Atheism  and 
Catholicism  are  to  his  own  mind  the  only  logical 
alternatives  ;  (2)  he  is  a  Catholic  because  a  Theist ; 
and  (3)  a  Theist,  because  he  believes  in  his  own 
existence,  and  hears  God  speak  in  his  conscience. 
Now,  in  a  case  like  this,  it  is  a  matter  of  moment  to 
see  how  the  principle  and  the  ultimate  deduction  are 


1  Apologia,  p.  198  (ed.  1883). 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  121 


related — the  process  by  which  he  passes  from  con- 
science to  God,  and  from  God  to  Catholicism.  It 
may  be  true  that  "  he  has  not  confined  the  defence 
of  his  own  creed  to  the  proposition  that  it  is  the 
only  possible  alternative  to  Atheism " ; 1  but  it  is 
certainly  true  that  he  believes  it  to  be  the  only  real 
alternative,  and  his  belief  looks  ever  and  again 
through  the  joints  and  fissures  of  his  cumulative 
argument,  especially  as  pursued  and  presented  in 
his  great  dialectic  work.  The  position,  a  Catholic 
because  a  Theist,  really  means,  when  translated  out 
of  its  purely  individualistic  form,  a  Catholic  in  order 
that  he  may  continue  a  Theist ;  for,  as  Dr.  Newman 
conceives  the  matter,  Catholicism,  though  it  did  not 
create  Theism,  is  yet  necessary  to  its  continuance 
as  a  belief.  "  Outside  the  Catholic  Church,  things 
are  tending  to  Atheism  in  one  shape  or  another."  2 
The  Catholic  church  is  the  one  "  face  to  face  an- 
tagonist," able  "  to  withstand  and  baffle  the  fierce 
energy  of  passion  and  the  all-corroding,  all-dissolving 
scepticism  of  the  intellect  in  religious  inquiries." 3 
As  Dr.  Newman  conceives  the  matter,  Catholicism 
is  for  the  race  as  for  the  individual,  the  only  alter- 
native to  Atheism,  the  necessities  that  govern  the 
individual  governing  also  the  collective  experience. 
Without  Catholicism,  faith  in  God  could  not  continue 
to  live.     There  is,  therefore,  in  spite  of  the  con- 


1  Mr.  Lilly's  letter,  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  500. 

2  Apologia,  p.  244.  3  Ibid.,  p.  243 . 


122 


CA  THOLICISM 


science,  so  much  latent  Atheism  in  the  nature,  and, 
especially,  the  reason  of  man,  that  without  an  or- 
ganization, miraculously  created  and  governed,  God 
would  be  driven  out  of  human  belief  and  reverence. 
A  theory  of  this  sort  may  in  a  high  degree  honour 
the  church,  but  in  the  same  degree  it  dishonours 
God.  If  "the  Church's  infallibility"  be  "a  provision 
adapted  by  the  mercy  of  the  Creator  to  preserve 
Religion  in  the  world,"  1  then  the  provision  has  been 
not  only,  as  the  history  of  European  thought  testifies, 
singularly  .ill-adapted  to  its  end  ;  but  it  implies  a 
strange  defect  in  the  original  constitution  of  the  world, 
and  a  still  stranger  limitation,  alike  in  the  intensive 
and  extensive  sense,  of  the  divine  relation  to  it. 

The  relation  between  Theism  and  Catholicism 
being  so  conceived,  the  one  must  be  made  to  in- 
volve the  other  ;  the  Theism  becomes  the  implicit 
Catholicism,  the  Catholicism  the  explicit  Theism. 
The  question  here  is,  not  why  the  Theism  needs  the 
Catholicism,  but  how  Catholicism  is  involved  in  and 
evolved  from  the  Theism  ?  The  questions  are  re- 
lated :  for  if  the  how  can  be  found,  the  why  will  at 
once  become  apparent.  Yet  it  is  necessary  to  hold 
them  distinct,  for  only  so  can  we  get  at  those  ulti- 
mate principles  or  ideas  we  are  here  in  search  of.  It 
seems,  at  first,  curious  that  the  Theism,  which  does 
not  need  Catholicism  for  its  creation,  should  need  it 
for  its  continuance.  One  would  have  thought  that 
what  existed  before  it,  and  independently  of  it,  could 


1  Apologia,  p.  245. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  123 


exist  without  it ;  but  this  is  the  very  thing  the  posi- 
tion will  not  allow.  Theism  must  grow  into  Catho- 
licism or  die,  become  Pantheism,  or  Atheism,  or 
something  equally  bad  and  unlike  the  original.  If 
we  ask,  why  ?  the  answer  is  more  or  less  rhetorical, 
a  survey  of  modern  schools  and  tendencies  of 
thought ;  and  a  comparison  of  their  conflict  and 
varieties  of  opinion,  with  the  certainty,  harmony,  and 
tenacity  of  Catholic  belief.  But  if  we  ask,  how  the 
one  involves  and  leads  up  to  the  other  ?  we  shall 
find  that  it  was  really  and  only  due  to  the  concatena- 
tion of  ideas  in  Newman's  own  mind.  What  made 
him,  because  a  Theist,  become  a  Catholic  ?  There  was 
nothing  generic,  or  common,  or  logical  in  the  process, 
to  give  it  validity  apart  from  the  assumptions  and 
peculiar  history  of  the  man  himself. 

But,  to  pursue  the  analysis,  it  is  evident  that  the 
answer  to  the  question,  What  made  him  because  a 
Theist  become  a  Catholic  ?  depends  on  the  answer 
to  a  still  prior  question,  Why  is  he  a  Theist  ?  What 
is  the  basis  and  reason  of  his  Theism  ?  He  tells  us 
that  he  came  to  rest  in  the  thought  of  two,  and  two 
only,  absolute  and  luminously  self-evident  beings,  him- 
self and  God.1  But  why  was  the  being  of  God  as 
certain  and  luminous  to  him  as  his  own  ?  Through 
conscience,  which  he  holds  to  be  the  theistic  and 
religious  faculty  or  organ  in  man.2  "  Were  it  not 
for  the  voice,  speaking  so  clearly  in  my  conscience 

1  Apologia,  p.  4. 

2  Grammar  of  Assent  pp.  105-110,  389  (fifth  ed.). 


124 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


and  my  heart,  I  should  be  an  Atheist,  or  a  Pantheist, 
or  a  Polytheist  when  I  look  into  the  world."  1  "  As 
we  have  our  initial  knowledge  of  the  universe  through 
sense,  so  do  we  in  the  first  instance  begin  to  learn 
about  its  Lord  and  God  from  conscience."  2  In  each 
case  the  knowledge  is  instinctive ;  "  the  office  which 
the  senses  directly  fulfil  as  regards  creation,"  is  in- 
directly fulfilled  by  the  sense  of  moral  obligation  as 
regards  the  Creator.3  It  is  therefore  conscience  not 
as  "  moral  sense,"  but  as  "  sense  of  duty,"  as  "  magis- 
terial dictate,"  which  "  impresses  the  imagination 
with  the  picture  of  a  supreme  Governor,  a  judge, 
holy,  just,  powerful,  all-seeing,  retributive." 4  As  a 
consequence  "  conscience  teaches  us,  not  only  that 
God  is,  but  what  He  is  "  ;  "  we  learn  from  its  infor- 
mations to  conceive  of  the  Almighty,  primarily,  not 
as  a  God  of  wisdom,  of  knowledge,  of  power,  of 
benevolence,  but  as  a  God  of  justice  and  judgment." 
"  The  special  attribute  under  which  it  brings  Him 
before  us,  to  which  it  subordinates  all  other  attri- 
butes, is  that  of  justice — retributive  justice."  5  The 
"  creative  principle "  and  the  contents  of  religion 
necessarily  correspond  ;  the  correlative  of  the  "  magis- 
terial dictate "  within,  is  the  dictating  magistrate 
without. 

Conscience,  then,   is   the   theistic  and  religious 


1  Apologia,  p.  241. 

3  Ibid,,  p.  104. 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  390-391. 


2  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  63. 
4  Ibid.,  pp.  105-1 10. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     1 25 


faculty  ;  but  what  of  the  intellect,  the  reason  ?  While 
"  the  unaided  reason,  when  correctly  exercised,  leads 
to  a  belief  in  God,  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
and  in  a  future  retribution,"  "  the  faculty  of  reason," 
considered  "  actually  and  historically,"  tends  "  to- 
wards a  simple  unbelief  in  matters  of  religion." 
The  intellect  is  "  aggressive,   capricious,  untrust- 
worthy " ;  its  "  immense  energy "  must  be  smitten 
hard  and  thrown  back  by  an  infallible  authority,  if 
Religion  is  to  be  saved.     Its  action  in  religious 
matters  is  corrosive,  dissolving,  sceptical.1  Hence 
while  the  conscience  creates   religion,  the  reason 
tends  to  create  unbelief ;  the  one  is  on  the  one  side 
of  God,  the  other  against  Him.    Of  course  he  speaks 
of  "  reason  as  it  acts  in  fact  and  concretely  in  fallen 
man  "  ;  but  the  conscience  he  speaks  of  is  also  the 
active  and  actual  "in  fallen  man."    If  sin  puts  either, 
it  must  put  both,  out  of  court ;  what  does  not  dis- 
qualify the  one  as  a  witness,  ought  not  to  be  used 
to  stop  the  mouth  of  the  other. 

3.  But  why  is  so  different  a  measure  meted  out 
to  the  two  faculties  ?  The  reason  must  be  sought  in 
Dr.  Newman's  underlying  philosophy.  That  philo- 
sophy may  be  described  as  one  empirical  and  scep- 
tical, qualified  by  a  peculiar  religious  experience. 
He  has  a  deep  distrust  of  the  intellect ;  he  dare  not 
trust  his  own,  for  he  does  not  know  where  it  might 


1  Apologia,  pp.  243-246.  Cf.  Discourses  io  Mixed  Congre- 
gations, p.  283. 


126 


CA  THOLICISM 


lead  him,  and  he  will  not  trust  any  other  man's. 
The  mind  "  must  be  broken  in  to  the  belief  of  a 
power  above  it "  ;  to  recognize  the  Creator  is  to  have 
its  "stiff  neck"  bent.1  The  real  problem  of  the 
Grammar  of  Assent  is,  How,  without  the  consent 
and  warrant  of  the  reason,  to  justify  the  being  of 
religion,  and  faith  in  that  infallible  church  which 
alone  realizes  it.3  The  whole  book  is  pervaded  by 
the  intensest  philosophical  scepticism  ;  this  supplies 
its  motif,  determines  its  problem,  necessitates  its  dis- 
tinctions, rules  over  the  succession  and  gradation  of 
its  arguments.  His  doctrine  of  assents,  his  distinc- 
tion into  notional  and  real — which  itself  involves  a 
philosophy  of  the  most  empirical  individualism — his 
criticism  of  Locke,  his  theories  of  inference,  certitude, 
and  the  illative  sense,  all  mean  the  same  thing.3 

1  Discourses  to  Mixed  Congregations ,  pp.  275,  276. 

3  Mr.  Froude,  in  a  for  him  rather  innocent  way,  describes 
the  Grammar  as  "  an  attempt  to  prove  that  there  is  no  reason- 
able standing-ground  between  Atheism  and  submission  to  the 
Holy  See." — Short  Studies,  second  series,  p.  83.  If  he  had 
said — "  a  book  intended  to  show  how  a  sceptic  in  philosophy 
could,  in  the  matter  of  Religion,  find  no  standing-ground,"  etc., 
etc.,  he  would  have  been  nearer  the  truth. 

3  The  philosophical  scepticism  is,  of  course,  implicit,  not  ex- 
plicit. From  the  latter  he  has  tried  carefully  to  guard  him- 
self ;  cf.  Gram.,  64.  In  this  connection  the  paragraphs,  pp.  60, 
61,  which  the  late  Dr.  Ward  thought  a  veiled  attack  on  himself, 
ought  to  be  studied  :  cf.  Philosophical  Theism,  vol.  i.,  pp.  30,  31. 
The  two  men  were  alike  in  their  religious  profession,  but  not  in 
their  philosophical  principles.  The  sort  of  analysis  in  which 
Dr.  Ward  delighted,  was  not  agreeable  to  Dr.  Newman  ;  it 
savoured  too  much  of  the  abstract  and  a  priori  to  please  so 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  127 


His  aim  is  to  withdraw  religion  and  the  proofs  con- 
cerning it  from  the  region  of  reason  and  reasoning 
into  the  realm  of  conscience  and  imagination,  where 
the  reasons  that  reign  may  satisfy  personal  experi- 
ence without  having  objective  validity,  or  being  able 
to  bear  the  criticism  that  tests  it.  And  so  he  feels 
"  it  is  a  great  question  whether  Atheism  is  not  as 
philosophically  consistent  with  the  phenomena  of  the 
physical  world,  taken  by  themselves,  as  the  doctrine 
of  a  creative  and  sovereign  Power."  This  is  the 
expression  of  real  and  deep  philosophic  doubt,  which 
is  not  in  any  way  mitigated  by  the  plea  that  he 
does  not  "  deny  the  validity  of  the  argument  from 
design  in  its  place."1  Neither  did  John  Stuart 
Mill. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  see  why  to  Dr.  New- 
man Theism  involves  Catholicism.  It  does  so  for  two 
reasons,  springing  respectively  out  of  his  doctrines 
of  the  conscience  and  of  reason.  He  interprets  con- 
science as  the  consciousness  of  a  "  magisterial  dic- 
tate," the  echo  within  the  breast  of  an  authoritative 
voice  speaking  without  it ;  and  to  him  the  legitimate 
deduction  is  the  organization  of  the  authority  in  an 
infallible  church,  and  the  articulation  of  the  voice 
through  its  infallible  head.     But  the  other  is  the 


great  a  lover  of  the  concrete  and  experimental.  And  Dr. 
Ward's  trust  in  his  faculties  and  their  avouchments,  came 
nearer  a  belief  in  the  sufficiency  of  reason  than  Dr.  Newman 
liked  to  go. 

1  University  Sermons,  p.  194.    Cf.  Mr.  Lilly,  p.  99. 


128 


CATHOLICISM 


more  imperative  reason  :  the  intellect  is  not  to  be 
trusted  ;  left  to  themselves  the  conscience  may  suc- 
ceed at  first,  but  the  intellect  prevails  at  last.  There 
is  no  possible  escape.  "  Unlearn  Catholicism,"  and 
the  "infallible  succession  "  is,  "  Protestant,  Unitarian, 
Deist,  Pantheist,  Sceptic."1  The  "formal  proofs" 
for  the  being  of  God  may  amount  to  "  an  irrefragable 
demonstration  against  the  Freethinker  and  the  Scep- 
tic"; but  they  are  able  so  "  to  invalidate  that  proof" 
as  to  "  afford  a  plausible,  though  not  a  real,  excuse 
for  doubting  about  it."  And  without  Catholicism 
the  doubt  is  invincible.  "  When  a  man  does  not 
believe  in  the  church,  there  is  nothing  in  reason  to 
keep  him  from  doubting  the  being  of  a  God." 
"  There  is  nothing  between  it  (the  church)  and 
Scepticism,  when  men  exert  their  reason  freely."2 

4.  Atheism  and  Catholicism  are  then  to  Dr.  New- 
man the  only  possible  logical  alternatives,  because,  if 
we  are  not  driven  by  the  inner  and  ethical  authority, 
i.e.  conscience,  to  rest  in  an  infallible  outer  authority, 
i.e.  the  Roman  church,  we  must  follow  whither  the 
intellect  leads,  and  make  the  facilis  descensus  Averni. 


1  Discourses  to  Mixed  Congregations,  p.  283.  Cardinal  New- 
man here  but  repeats  Lamennais.  It  is  interesting  to  com- 
pare the  agreements  of  the  Essai  sur  V '  Indiffere?ice  with  the 
Grammar  and  the  Apologia.  They  differ  in  some  important 
respects,  but  in  one  fundamental  point  they  agree — their  philo- 
sophical basis  for  the  dogma  of  authority  is  the  most  absolute 
of  all  scepticism — doubt  of  the  sanity  and  divine  contents  of 
human  reason.  They  believe  in  its  native  and  ineradicable 
Atheism.  2  Ibid.,  pp.  262,  263,  283. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     I  29 


But  what  sort  of  basis  have  we  here  for  Theism  ?  and 
what  sort  of  Catholicism  have  we  built  on  it  ?  The 
nature  of  man  is  divided,  and  its  two  parts  set  in 
contradiction  and  antagonism  to  each  other.  The 
conscience  is  "  the  aboriginal  vicar  of  Christ,  a  pro- 
phet in  its  informations,  a  monarch  in  its  peremp- 
toriness,  a  priest  in  its  blessings  and  anathemas  ;  "  1 
but  the  reason  is  critical,  sceptical,  infidel,  even 
atheistic.  This  division  of  nature  is  the  death  of 
natural  proof;  it  is  a  confession  that  proof  is  im- 
possible. He  may  recognize  "the  formal  proofs  on 
which  the  being  of  a  God  rests  " ;  but  his  recogni- 
tion must  be  criticized  in  the  light  of  his  fundamental 
principle.  It  is  to  him  entirely  illegitimate.  Con- 
science he  holds  to  be  authoritative,  but  not  reason. 
He  deduces  Religion  from  conscience,  but  leaves 
reason  to  be  crushed  and  subdued  by  authority. 
Now  to  build  Religion  on  a  doctrine  that  implies 
the  radical  antagonism  of  these  two,  is  to  make 
their  reconciliation  impossible  to  Religion  ;  the  one 
must  be  sacrificed  to  the  other  if  man  is  ever  to  have 
peace.  The  Catholicism  that  achieves  this  may  be 
extensive,  but  is  not  intensive  ;  it  may  be  political  and 
local,  but  is  not  ideal  and  human  ;  it  may  be  external- 
ized authority,  but  is  not  externalized  reason.  It 
may  include  all  men,  but  it  does  not  include  the 
whole  man.    But  more  :  the  reason  within  man  im- 


1  Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.— Anglican  Difficulties,  vol. 
ii.  p.  248. 

9 


130 


CA  THOLICISM 


plies  the  reason  without  him  ;  he  develops  into  a 
rational  being  because  he  lives  in  a  rational  world. 
To  leave  the  theistic  contents  of  the  reason  unexpli- 
cated,  is  to  leave  the  theistic  reason  of  the  world 
unexplored  and  unrecognized  ;  only  as  they  are  con- 
ceived in  their  correspondent  and  reciprocal  relations 
can  we  have  a  Theism  satisfactory  to  the  whole 
nature  of  man  and  explicative  of  the  system  to 
which  he  belongs.  It  is  only  through  reason  we  find 
an  argument  of  universal  validity  ;  but  Cardinal 
Newman's  doctrine  is  the  purest  individualism.  The 
deliverance  of  his  conscience  avails  for  himself — can 
avail  for  no  other ;  it  has  interest  as  a  fact  of  personal 
testimony,  but  has  no  value  as  a  ground  of  general 
belief.  It  is  significant,  too,  as  to  the  temper  of  his 
own  mind  ;  in  his  intellect  as  he  knows  it,  in  his 
reason  as  he  interprets  it,  he  finds  no  Religion,  no 
evidence  for  the  being  of  God  :  he  dare  not  trust  or 
follow  it,  for  its  bent  is  sceptical ;  and  so  he  has  to 
invoke  the  voice  of  authority  to  silence  and  to  com- 
mand. The  need  he  discovered  in  history  for  an  in- 
fallible church,  he  had  first  found  in  his  own  breast. 

§  IV.  Whether  either  the  Scepticism  or  the  Authority 
be  Valid 

Detailed  criticism  of  Newman's  position,  with 
its  various  assumptions  and  complex  confusion  of 
thought,  is,  of  course,  here  impossible  ;  but  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  conceive  a  worse  basis  for  a  constructive 
Theism,  especially  in  a  critical  and  sceptical  age.  It 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  131 


turns  Catholicism  into  a  new  and  feebler  Protestant- 
ism, one  directed  against  the  modern  movement  of 
mind.  The  Freethinker  sacrifices  religion  to  reason 
in  one  way,  by  declaring  that  his  individual  mind  is 
the  measure  of  religious  truth  ;  the  Catholic  does  it 
in  another  way,  by  declaring  that  unless  religion  come 
under  the  aegis  of  his  church,  it  will  assuredly  perish 
before  the  corrosive  action  of  the  intellect.  Each 
position  is  an  awful  degradation  of  religion,  but  the 
latter  is  the  greater  ;  for  the  intellect  will  not,  indeed 
cannot,  cease  to  be  active  and  critical,  and  what  is 
declared  incapable  of  resisting  its  criticism  is  handed 
over  to  death.  There  is  surely  a  nobler  Catholicism 
than  this,  one  not  of  Rome,  but  of  man,  based,  not  on 
the  excommunication  of  the  reason,  but  on  the  recon- 
ciliation of  the  whole  nature,  intellect,  conscience, 
heart,  will,  to  God  and  His  truth. 

1.  In  Cardinal  Newman's  position,  those  elements 
that  belong  to  his  Apology  for  Theism  must  be  dis- 
tinguished from  those  that  belong  to  his  Apology  for 
Catholicism.  They  are  not  only  distinct,  but  incom- 
patible. Theism  is  so  rooted  in  his  being,  that  he 
must  believe  in  God  because  he  believes  in  his  own 
existence  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  his  reason  is  so 
inimical  to  Theism  that  if  he  had  not  become  a 
Catholic,  he  must  have  become  an  Atheist.  Now, 
this  is  an  important  psychological  fact,  a  valuable 
testimony  concerning  personal  experience  ;  but  when 
it  is  erected  into  a  dialectic  position  and  elaborated 
into  an  Apology  for  Catholicism,  as  the  only  possible 


132 


CA  THOLICISM 


permanent  form  of  the  Christian  Religion,  the  matter 
is  altogether  changed.  It  is  then  necessary  to  say, 
the  position  is  at  once  philosophically  false  and 
historically  inaccurate.  To  exercise  the  intellect 
is  to  serve  God  ;  Religion  has  been  most  vital 
and  most  vigorous  when  the  intellect  was  most 
critically  concerned  with  it.  This  is  a  simple  histori- 
cal fact.  In  the  Apologia  1  it  is  said  :  "  Xo  truth, 
however  sacred,  can  stand  against  it  (the  faculty  of 
reason),  in  the  long  run  "  :  and  the  illustration  is,  the 
pagan  world  when  our  Lord  came.  But  the  intellect 
in  the  ancient  world  ennobled  and  spiritualized  Reli- 
gion ;  the  period  of  its  greatest  activity  in  Greece 
was  also  the  period  when  the  religious  faith  became 
purest  and  strongest.  The  poets  made  its  gods  more 
august,  moral,  judicial.  Plato  made  its  ideas  sub- 
limer,  purged  its  mythology,  transfigured  the  theistic 
conception,  made  the  world  articulate  the  perfect 
reason,  and  time  sleep  in  the  bosom  of  eternity.  The 
Stoics,  by  finding  a  moral  order  in  the  universe  and  a 
moral  nature  in  man,  breathed  a  new  ethical  spirit 
into  both  their  religion  and  their  race.  In  the  ancient 
world  the  activity  of  the  intellect  in  the  field  of 
religious  knowledge  was  the  life  of  Religion ;  and 
when  it  ceased  to  be  active,  Religion  ceased  to  live. 
In  the  days  of  our  Lord,  the  places  where  the  intel- 
lect was  most  active  were  also  the  places  where 
Religion  was  most  real. 


1  Page  243, 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  133 


And  what  was  true  of  the  ancient,  is  true  of  the 
modern  world.  The  activity  of  the  intellect  in  Re- 
ligion has  been  altogether  beneficent ;  its  criticism  has 
been  but  the  prelude  to  construction  ;  what  has  died 
under  its  analysis  has  but  made  room  for  higher 
forms  of  thought  and  larger  modes  of  life.  Did  space 
allow,  illustration  were  easy  and  abundant,  especially 
from  the  highest  of  all  regions — the  action  of  specu- 
lation on  the  idea  of  God.  To  take  the  strongest 
illustration,  it  is  no  paradox  to  say,  the  system  of 
Spinoza  was,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Christian 
Religion,  a  greater  benefit  to  Europe  than  any — I  had 
almost  said  than  all  the  conversions  to  Catholicism  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  whether  of  kings  like  James 
II.,  or  men  of  letters  like  John  Dryden.  For  it  raised 
the  problem  of  Theism  to  a  higher  platform,  directly 
tended  to  enlarge  and  ennoble  the  conception  of  God, 
to  enrich  the  idea  of  Religion,  to  promote  the  study 
and  criticism  and  appreciation  of  its  work  in  history  ; 
placing  it  in  a  higher  relation  to  the  nature  and  action 
of  God  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  spirit  and  life  of 
man  on  the  other.  When  Newman  says  that,  with- 
out Catholicism,  we  must  proceed  "in  a  dreadful  but 
infallible  succession,"  from  Protestantism  through 
Deism  or  Pantheism  to  Scepticism,  or  that  "  outside 
the  Catholic  Church  things  are  tending  to  Atheism  in 
one  shape  or  other,"  he  writes  mere  rhetoric.  The 
statement  might  be  reversed  ;  the  "  infallible  succes- 
sion "  might  be  charged  upon  Catholicism  with  quite 
as  much  truth  and  charity,  or  rather  with  more 


134 


CATHOLICISM 


historical  warrant  and  justification.  Pantheism  was 
known  in  the  Golden  Age  of  Catholicism,  the  Middle 
Ages  ;  to  it  must  be  reckoned  the  systems  of  Scotus 
Erigena,  Meister  Eckhardt,  the  Dominican,  as  well  as 
whole  Schools  of  Mystics  ;  the  man  who  revived  it, 
Spinoza's  forerunner,  if  not  master,  was  another 
Dominican,  Giordano  Bruno.  The  most  pronounced 
modern  materialism  was  developed  in  Catholic 
France ;  certain  of  its  earliest  masters  were  Catholic 
dignitaries.  One  of  the  earliest  martyrs  to  Atheism 
was  the  pupil  of  Catholic  Divines,  the  whilom  priest 
Vanini.  The  Deism  of  eighteenth-century  England 
was  innocence  compared  with  the  revived  paganism 
of  fifteenth-century  Italy.  The  man  whom  Buckle 
selected  for  special  praise  as  having  been  the  first  to 
apply  the  rationalist  method  to  morals  and  to  history, 
had  been  a  Catholic  priest  and  preacher.  Catholicism 
converted  Bayle,  but  only  to  make  a  more  utter 
sceptic  of  him  ;  converted  Gibbon,  but  only  to  see 
him  recoil  into  completer  infidelity.1  All  this  may  be 
poor  enough,  but  it  is  after  Newman's  manner.  Over 
against  his  charge,  "outside  Catholicism  things  are 
tending  to  Atheism,"  I  place  this  as  the  simple  record 
of  fact,  verifiable  by  all  who  choose  to  pursue  the 
necessary  inquiries — inside  Catholicism  things  have 

1  I  hesitated  long  about  Gibbon  ;  but  after  carefully  weighing 
the  statement  in  the  "  autobiography,"  and  one  or  two  signifi- 
cant passages  in  the  Decline  and  Fall,  I  determined  to  let  his 
name  stand.  Yet  the  argument  does  not  depend  on  one  or  two 
names  :  it  represents  tendencies  operative  through  centuries. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  T35 

tended,  and  still,  wherever  mind  is  active,  do  tend,  to 
the  completest  negation.  If  his  argument  be  held 
equal  to  the  proof  of  the  need  of  infallibility,  mine 
must  be  held  to  prove  its  perfect  insufficiency.  Men 
may  need  it,  but  it  is  not  adequate  to  their  needs  ; 
and  an  inadequate  infallibility  is  certainly  near  of  kin 
to  common  fallibility.  The  arguments  are  parallel, 
but  the  cases  are  not.  Catholicism  professes  to  be 
able  by  its  authority  to  do  what  history  has  proved  it 
unable  to  accomplish,  and  so  is  justly  chargeable  with 
the  most  serious  incompetency  ;  but  Protestantism, 
making  no  claim  to  authority,  professing  indeed  to  be 
quite  without  it,  may  justly  refuse  to  bear  the  respon- 
sibility of  failure.  Incompetency  in  a  system  like 
the  Roman  is  the  most  invincible  disproof  of  claim  ; 
the  competence  that  comes  of  supernatural  gifts  and 
authority  is  no  part  of  Protestantism. 

2.  But  Cardinal  Newman's  position  raises  another 
question,  whether  an  infallible  authority,  such  as  he 
attributes  to  the  Church  and  Pope  of  Rome,  and 
exercised  for  the  purposes  he  describes,  would  be  a 
help  or  a  hindrance  to  Religion  ?  Would  it  make 
Religion  more  or  less  possible,  more  or  less  stable 
and  real  ?  Differences  on  such  matters  are,  as  a  rule, 
apprehended  in  their  superficial  aspects  rather  than 
in  their  determinative  principles  and  causes.  One  of 
these  is  the  idea  of  Religion  ;  it  is  one  thing  to  me, 
another  to  Cardinal  Newman.  The  Catholic  criticizes 
Protestantism  as  if  it  were  or  professed  to  be  a  sort 
of  substitute  for  Catholicism  ;  but  it  is  not  this,  and 


136 


CA  THOT.ICISM 


never  can  become  it.  They  are  not  simply  opposites, 
but  incommensurables.  The  one  represents  an  organ- 
ized and  finely  articulated  hierarchical  system,  legis- 
lative, administrative,  administered,  able  to  compre- 
hend men  and  nations,  and  cover  the  whole  life  from- 
the  cradle  to  the  grave  ;  but  the  other  denotes  only 
an  attitude  of  mind  or  the  principle  that  regulates  it. 
Catholicism  claims  to  be  a  Religion  ;  Protestantism 
cannot  be  truly  or  justly  described  as  making  any  such 
claim,  or  as  seeking  to  be  allowed  to  make  it.  It  is 
simply  the  assertion  of  a  right  to  perform  a  duty,  the 
right  of  every  man  to  fulfil  the  holiest  and  most 
imperial  of  his  duties,  that  of  knowing  and  believing 
the  God  who  made  his  reason,  of  worshipping  and 
serving  the  God  who  speaks  in  his  conscience.  It  is 
significant  as  the  contradiction  and  antithesis  to  a 
system  of  collectivism,  which  hindered  the  clear  sense 
of  personal  relation  and  responsibility  to  God  ;  but 
the  creation  of  this  sense  was  the  work  of  God  alone, 
and  its  realization  in  Religion  was  due  to  His  con- 
tinued and  gracious  activity  among  men.  Protestan- 
tism is  thus  only  an  attempt  to  make  religion 
possible,  to  create  the  conditions  that  will  permit  and 
require  the  Religion  of  Christ  to  become  actual.  It 
implies  the  being  of  this  Religion,  but  neither  creates 
it,  nor  represents  it,  nor  embodies  it ;  only  insists  on 
removing  whatever  hinders  God  and  man,  or  man 
and  the  Religion,  coming  face  to  face,  that  it  may  be 
realized  in  and  through  his  spirit.  It  may  be  con- 
strued to  signify  the  supremacy  of  reason,  and  so  it 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT    1 37 


does ;  but  this  only  means  the  supremacy  of  the 
truth,  or,  in  religious  speech,  the  sovereignty  of  God. 
The  reason,  indeed,  is  not  particular,  individual, 
arbitrary,  but  universal,  law-abiding,  reasonable — the 
thought  which  cannot  think  without  following  the 
laws  of  its  own  being,  and  cannot  follow  them  with- 
out finding  the  truth.  The  whole  truth  may  not  be 
found,  but  what  is  found  is  reality,  divine  and 
sovereign  to  the  man  who  finds  it. 

In  a  certain  sense,  submission  to  Catholicism  is  the 
victory  of  unbelief ;  the  man  who  accepts  authority 
because  he  dare  not  trust  his  intellect,  lest  it  lead  him 
into  Atheism,  is  vanquished  by  the  Atheism  he  fears. 
He  unconsciously  subscribes  to  the  impious  principle, 
that  the  God  he  believes,  has  given  him  so  godless  a 
reason  that  were  he  to  follow  it,  it  would  lead  him  to 
a  faith  without  God.  Now,  there  is  more  religion  in 
facing  the  consequences  than  in  turning  away  from 
them  ;  for  the  man  who  faces  the  consequences 
remains  truer  to  the  truth,  obeys  the  most  immediate 
and  inexorable  law  of  God,  that  given  in  his  own 
being.  I  can  understand  the  man  who  says  :  "  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  either  a  Pantheist  or  Agnostic  ;  but  I 
must  be  what  the  best  thought  and  light  within  me — 
beams  as  they  are  of  the  universal  and  eternal — 
determine  ;  and  if  they  conduct  me  to  either  Panthe- 
ism or  Agnosticism,  then  to  either  I  will  go,  obedient 
to  the  laws  under  which  I  live  and  think."  But  I 
cannot  so  well  understand  or  admire  the  man  who 
says  :  "  If  I  follow  my  reason,  it  will  make  an  Atheist 


1 38 


CA  THOLICISM 


or  a  Sceptic  of  me ;  therefore,  I  will  flee  for  refuge 
to  the  arms  of  infallible  authority."  There  is  a  har- 
mony, and  so  a  religion,  in  the  one  nature  that  is 
absent  from  the  other  ;  the  one  has  faced  the  issues, 
and  knows  them  ;  the  other  has  evaded  their  touch, 
and  is  haunted  by  possibilities  he  cannot  but  fear. 
There  is  victory,  even  in  defeat,  to  the  man  who  has 
dared  the  conflict  ;  there  is  defeat,  even  in  the  rest  he 
wins,  to  the  man  who,  that  he  may  keep  a  whole  skin, 
turns  and  runs  from  the  battle. 

3.  But  there  is  another  and  still  deeper  differ- 
ence, the  conception  of  the  Reason.  Here  the  ideas 
are  again  opposite  and  incommensurable.  Dr.  New- 
man's language  seems  to  me  often  almost  impious,  a 
positive  arraignment  of  the  God  who  gave  man  his 
intellect.  I  may  say,  and  the  saying  need  not  be 
misunderstood,  reason  is  to  me  as  holy  as  his  church 
is  to  him.  It  is  too  godlike  to  be  inimical  to  God; 
scepticism  is  not  the  essence  but  the  accident  of  its 
activity.  It  is  critical  when  confronted  by  authority 
or  authoritative  formulae,  and  it  ought  to  be  critical 
then  ;  but  its  history  does  not  record  the  growth  of 
scepticism,  rather  narrates  the  expansion  and  eleva- 
tion of  belief.  Reason,  while  realized  in  individuals, 
is  universal ;  while  conditioned  in  its  working,  it  is 
transcendental  in  its  nature  and  worth  ;  while  it  acts 
in  and  through  millions  of  natural  agents,  it  has  a 
supernatural  source  and  end.  It  represents  law,  while 
authority  represents  the  violation  of  law  ;  the  one  ex- 
presses an  order  instituted  of  God,  but  the  other 


CATHOLICISM  AND  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT    1 39 


man's  most  violent  attempt  at  its  suspension  or  super- 
session. Hence  reason  is  here  conceived  as  essen- 
tially architectonic  ;  its  action,  where  most  analytical, 
is  always  with  a  view  to  a  more  perfect  synthesis.  It 
cannot  realize  its  idea,  or  be  itself,  without  being  con- 
structive. Every  attempt  to  do  justice  to  it  has 
emphasized  this  as  belonging  to  its  very  essence,  that 
without  which  it  could  not  be  reason.  Take,  for 
example,  Kant.  He  and  Newman  have  been  com- 
pared or  rather  contrasted  as,  respectively,  the  one  the 
source  of  modern  scepticism  and  agnosticism,  and  the 
other  the  ideal  teacher  of  religion.  But  the  positions 
ought  to  be  reversed  ;  Kant  is  the  great  teacher  of 
faith,  Newman,  in  the  region  of  the  reason  or  the  in- 
tellect, is  the  master  of  scepticism.  Kant's  reason  was 
architectonic,  made  nature,  supplied  the  forms  and  the 
conditions  of  thought  by  which  alone  she  was  inter- 
pretable  and  interpreted.  Reason  was  a  latent  or 
implicit  universe,  real  in  its  very  ideality,  so  deter- 
mining phenomena  as  to  constitute  a  cosmos.  But 
where  Kant  treads  firmly,  Newman  walks  feebly, 
speaks  of  instinct  and  presumption,  and  feels  as  if  he 
dare  not  trust  reason  with  nature,  lest  he  have  to  trust 
her  with  more.  Kant,  indeed,  does  not  allow  that  the 
mere  or  pure  reason,  which  is  equal  to  the  interpreta- 
tion of  nature,  is  equal  to  the  cognition  of  God  ;  and 
he  builds,  like  Newman,  his  argument  for  the  Divine 
existence  on  conscience.  But  to  him  conscience  is 
still  reason,  all  the  more  that  it  uses  the  "  categorical 
imperative,"  and  his  argument,  unlike  Newman's,  is 


T4° 


CA  THOLICISM 


reasoned  ;  it  is  not  the  mere  echo  of  a  "  magisterial 
dictate,"  but  is  based  on  a  universal  principle,  and 
articulates  a  complete  theory  of  moral  sovereignty 
and  government.    Kant's  moral  religion  was  at  once 
natural  and  transcendental ;  Newman's  is  positive 
and  legislative.  The  former  was  inseparable  from  the 
ideal  of  humanity ;  but  the  latter  is  institutional, 
comes  ab  extra.    Kant's  position  is  the  vindication  of 
faith  through  nature  ;  Newman's  is  the  surrender  of 
nature  to  unbelief.    For  with  Kant  the  practical  is 
not  the  contradiction  of  the  pure  reason  ;  the  one  is 
but  the  supplement  of  the  other.    They  are  conceived 
by  their  author  not  as  mutually  independent,  still  less 
as  opposed,  but  as  so  constituting  a  unity  and  a  syn- 
thesis that  what  the  one  does  for  nature  the  other 
does  for  eternity  and  God.    But  Newman  finds  such 
a  dualism  in  nature  that  he  has  to  introduce  a  Dens 
ex  machina  to  rectify  it.    Conscience  demands  God, 
but  reason  will  not  allow  the  faith  in  Him  to  live  ;  and 
so  an  infallible  church  is  called  in  to  determine  the 
issue,  confirm  and    support    the    conscience,  and 
"  preserve  religion  in  the  world  "  by  so  restraining 
"  the  freedom  of  thought "  as  "  to  rescue  it  from  its 
own  suicidal   excesses."  1     This  may   be   a  good 
excuse  for  authority,  but  it  is  a  bad  apology  for  faith. 
He  who  places  the  rational  nature  of  man  on  the  side 
of  Atheism,  that  he  may  the  better  defend  a  church, 
saves  the  church  at  the  expense  of  religion  and  God. 

1  Apol.  245. 

May,  1885. 


IV 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL 
CRITICISM 

^HE  criticism  of  the  intellectual  or  speculative 


A  bases  of  any  institution  is  criticism  of  the 
institution  ;  the  reasons  that  are  thought  to  justify 
its  existence  describe  its  character.  As  men  conceive 
God,  they  conceive  Religion  ;  and  as  Religion  is 
conceived,  so  is  the  Church.  Cardinal  Newman1  has 
affirmed  that  the  ultimate  question  between  Catholi- 
cism and  Protestantism  is  not  one  of  history  or  indi- 
vidual doctrine,  but  of  first  principles.  He  is  right, 
only  his  principle,  whether  the  Church  be  or  be  not 
a  continuous  miracle,  is  not  primary  enough.  A 
miracle  by  becoming  continuous  ceases  to  be  miracu- 
lous ;  a  supernatural  which  has  descended  into  the 
bosom  of  the  natural  becomes  part  of  its  order,  and 
must  be  handled  like  the  other  forces  and  phenomena 
of  history.  Below  the  question  as  to  the  Church  lies 
this  other  and  deeper — What  is  God  ?  and  what  His 
relations  to  man  and  man's  to  Him?  or,  How  are  we 
to  conceive  God,  and  how  represent  His  rule  and 
redemption  of  man  ?    It  is  this  radical  issue  which 


1  Present  Position  of  Catholics  in  England,  lect.  vii. 

141 


142 


CA  THOLICISM 


gives  living  interest  to  ancient  controversies,  lifting 
them  from  the  noisy  field  of  ecclesiastical  polemics 
to  the  serener  heights  of  spiritual  and  speculative 
thought. 

Now,  if  the  idea  of  God  be  conceived  as  the  idea 
really  determinative  of  our  religious  controversies,  it 
is  evident  that  the  discussion  in  the  preceding  essay 
as  to  its  genesis  and  proofs,  must  be  incomplete  until 
supplemented  by  a  discussion  as  to  its  expression  or 
realization  in  history.  These  are  parts  of  a  whole, 
and  so  absolute  is  the  need  of  harmony  between  the 
parts  that  we  may  say  this  :  To  determine  the  idea  of 
God  is  to  fix  the  standpoint  from  which  history  is  to 
be  studied  and  interpreted,  while  in  the  interpretation 
of  history  we  are  but  explicating  and  testing  our 
conception  of  God.  If  the  idea  of  God  in  theology 
be  mean,  the  idea  of  His  action  in  history  cannot  be 
noble ;  while,  conversely,  an  adequate  notion  of  His 
method  and  movement  in  history  demands  a  corres- 
pondent notion  of  His  character  and  ends.  If  we 
conceive  Him  as  in  the  same  sense  and  degree  the 
Father  and  Sovereign  of  every  man,  willing  good  to 
each,  evil  to  none,  equal  in  His  love  and  care  for  all, 
impartial  and  universal  as  law,  while  personal  and 
particular  as  mercy, — then  we  cannot  allow  either 
Him  or  His  truth  to  be  so  much  the  exclusive  pos- 
session of  a  given  society,  that  its  history  is  the 
history  of  His  mind  or  revelation,  and  of  His  purposes 
and  ways.  But  if  we  believe  that  He  has  committed 
His  truth,  His  spirit,  and  His  redemptive  agencies  to 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 43 


the  keeping  of  a  peculiar  and  pre-eminent  church,  then 
we  shall  regard  its  history  as  the  history  of  His  special 
action  or  providence,  all  who  are  without  it  being 
judged  by  and  through  it,  as  if  it  were  His  visible  and 
articulate  sovereignty.  Now  this,  in  the  very  degree 
that  it  gives  an  exalted  idea  of  the  church,  represents 
a  mean  idea  of  God  ;  an  historical  institution  is  en- 
nobled, but  the  immensest  and  most  august  of  human 
beliefs  is  narrowed  and  depraved.  In  a  true  sense, 
therefore,  we  explicate  our  theistic  idea  when  we 
attempt  to  explain  not  the  mere  phenomena  of 
nature,  but  the  immense  and  complex  procession  of 
forces,  persons,  institutions,  and  events,  which  we  call 
the  history  of  man.  Our  philosophy  of  history  is  but 
our  conception  of  God  evolved  and  articulated. 

§  I.  The  Ideas  of  God,  Religion,  and  ike  Chunk 

r.  This  fundamental  principle  determines  the  point 
at  which  our  discussion  must  be  resumed — the  Idea  of 
Religion.  This  idea  stands,  as  it  were,  intermediate 
between  the  ideas  of  God  and  the  Church,  and  their 
mutual  relations  may  be  thus  described  : — Religion  is 
the  realization,  in  the  regions  of  thought,  feeling,  and 
action,  of  the  idea  of  God  ;  while  the  Church  is  the 
idea  of  Religion  articulated  or  built  into  a  social 
organism,  whose  life  is  lived  on  the  field  of  history. 
What  this  means  will  be  better  understood  by-and- 
by.  Meanwhile  we  note,  the  three  ideas  must  corres- 
pond in  character  and  quality  ;  the  Religion  ever  is 
as  the  God  is,  and  the  Church  as  the  Religion.  The 


144 


CATHOLICISM 


radical  differences  are  those  of  the  theistic  idea  ;  it  is 
not  the  belief,  but  the  conception,  of  God  that  most 
decisively  differentiates  men.  That  He  is,  most  men 
believe  ;  where  they  mainly  differ  is  concerning  what 
He  is. 

In  the  sphere  of  thought  their  differences  are  ex- 
pressed in  the  various  theistic  philosophies — dualistic, 
monistic,  transcendental,  immanent ;  but  in  Religion 
they  are  represented  by  the  various  churches  and 
societies  that  embody  distinct  ideals  of  life  and  duty, 
authority   and    obedience,    worship    and  conduct. 
Politics  express  fundamental  beliefs — are,  indeed,  but 
those  beliefs  applied  to  the  regulation  of  civil  life  and 
the  organization  of  society.    Men  who  are  of  one 
faith  may  not  be  of  one  Religion  ;  they  may  have  one 
name  for  the  object  of  worship,  yet  differ  in  their 
notion  of  the  object ;  and  to  differ  here  is  to  differ 
radically  and  throughout.    There  is  a  conception  of 
God  that  makes  a  great  propitiatory  and  mediatorial 
church  a  necessity ;  and  there  is  a  conception  of 
Him  that  will  not  allow  any  such  institution  to  stand 
between  Him  and  man.    The  controversy  between 
these  antithetical  notions  is  not  of  yesterday,  but  is 
as  old  as  Religion,  dating  from  the  moment  when 
men  began  to  speak  of  and  worship  God.    In  all  the 
ancient  faiths  the  priestly  Deity  was  one,  and  the 
Deity  of  spirit  and  thought  another ;  they  might 
agree   in  name,  but  they  differed  in   nature  and 
character.    In  Judaism,  the  God  of  the  priesthood 
loved  the  official  sanctities,  the  temple,  the  altar,  the 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 45 


sacrifice,  the  incense,  the  priest  and  his  garments  and 
bells  and  breastplate,  the  sabbath,  the  new  moon,  the 
feast,  and  the  solemn  assembly.  But  the  God  of 
prophecy  loved  the  moral  and  spiritual  sanctities,  the 
living  temple,  the  whole  people  constituted  a  priest- 
hood unto  Jehovah,  the  sacrifices  of  the  broken  spirit 
and  the  contrite  heart,  the  law  written  within,  the 
worship  expressed  in  obedience,  the  obedience  that 
consisted  in  doing  justly,  loving  mercy,  and  walking 
humbly  with  God.  In  India  the  sacerdotal  Deity 
was  the  ground  and  cause  of  caste,  and  the  root  of  a 
religion  without  morality  ;  while  the  attempt  to  tran- 
scend so  mean  a  notion  produced  the  philosophies, 
pantheistic  and  pessimistic,  and  provoked  the  nega- 
tions which  became  Buddhism.  In  Greece  the  Re- 
ligion of  the  temple  and  the  priesthood  knew  no 
ethical  Deity,  and  had  no  ethical  spirit,  lived  by  faith 
in  myths  and  legends,  by  the  practice  of  mediation, 
by  processions  and  ceremonial  observances,  by  the 
grace  of  the  oracle  which  men  consulted  when  they 
wished  nature  helped  by  the  supernatural.  But  the 
Deity  of  the  Academy  and  the  Porch  was  morally 
beautiful,  true,  and  good  ;  and  their  ideal  of  Religion 
was  so  ethical  as  to  be  offended  and  affronted  by  the 
myths  and  customs  of  the  priestly  order.  Measured 
by  the  standard  of  this  order,  Socrates  was,  because  of 
his  faith  in  a  purer  God,  pronounced  guilty  and  worthy 
of  death ;  in  presence  of  its  moral  perversions  and 
impotences  Plato  was  forced  to  plead  for  a  purged 
mythology  and  a  new  and  nobler  priesthood  and  the 

10 


146 


CA  THOLICISM 


Stoic  was  driven  to  attempt  to  translate  the  ancient 
beliefs  into  the  symbols  of  a  hidden  philosophy.  And 
these  are  but  typical  cases,  illustrating  a  conflict 
every  historical  Religion  has  known,  and  the  Christian 
could  not  escape.  Within  it,  as  within  every  other, 
two  conceptions  of  Deity  have  had  to  contend  for  the 
mastery  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  the  contest  did  not  be- 
gin with  the  sixteenth  century,  and  will  not  end  with 
the  nineteenth.  However  much  disguised  as  a  ques- 
tion now  in  philosophy,  now  in  polity,  ecclesiastical 
or  civil,  here  as  a  controversy  of  churches,  there  as  a 
collision  of  peoples,  yet  the  fundamental  and  deter- 
minative problem  has  ever  remained  one  and  the  same 
— What  is  God  ?  and  what  His  relation  to  man  and 
man's  to  Him  ? 

2.  The  idea  of  God,  then,  determines  the  religious 
ideal,  Religion  being  but  the  form  in  which  the  idea 
appears  in  the  sphere  of  the  real,  and  living,  and 
related.  And  in  Cardinal  Newman  the  two  so 
correspond  as  to  reflect  and  repeat  each  other.  His 
religion  is  as  his  Theism  is :  both  proceed  from 
conscience  and  have  their  qualities  determined  by  it. 
God  appears  as  Judge,  and  Religion  "  is  founded  in 
one  way  or  other  on  the  sense  of  sin."1  Hence,  out 
of  the  sense  of  sin  and  the  fear  of  the  righteous  and 
judicial  God,  whose  absence  or  estrangement  from 
the  world  so  pierces  the  soul  and  bewilders  the  reason, 
he  educes  those  mediations,  priesthoods,  sacrifices, 
theories  of  future  and  even  eternal  penalties,  which  he 


1  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  392. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 47 


holds  to  be  the  essential  characteristics  of  all  the 
Natural  Religions.  Now,  his  doctrine  of  Religion  is 
as  little  true  to  history  as  we  found  his  Theism  to  be 
true  to  reason  and  thought.  It  is  characteristic  of 
Newman  that  his  favourite  authority  for  the  qualities 
and  features  of  Natural  Religion  is  Lucretius,  which 
is  very  much  as  if  one  were  to  quote  Voltaire  as  our 
most  veracious  and  trustworthy  witness  touching 
the  nature  and  action  of  Christianity.  As  a  simple 
matter  of  fact,  the  Religion  Lucretius  so  hated,  and 
described  as  so  hateful,  was  in  the  highest  degree 
artificial  —  a  product  of  many  and  even  malign 
influences,  of  various  and  even  hostile  civilizations. 
There  are  cycles  of  faiths  which  have  sacerdotal  ideas 
and  expiatory  rites,  and  there  are  also  cycles  of  faiths 
where  they  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  known  ;  but 
even  where  most  emphasized  and  observed  they  do 
not  imply  such  a  consciousness  of  guilt  as  Cardinal 
Newman  imagines  and  describes.  Indeed,  if  the 
history  of  Religions  prove  anything,  it  is  that  they 
are  not  "  founded  on  the  sense  of  sin,"  and  do  not 
regard  God,  primarily,  as  the  impersonation  of  "  re- 
tributive justice."  It  were  truer  to  say  that,  as  a  rule 
(there  are,  of  course,  exceptions),  the  pre-  and  extra- 
Christian  Religions  are  unmoral  ;  and  that  the  sense 
of  sin  is  the  direct  creation  of  Christianity,  including, 
of  course,  its  historical  forerunner.  And  the  older  or 
more  natural  the  Religions,  the  brighter  they  are,  and 
the  less  darkened  or  oppressed  by  the  consciousness 
of  guilt.    The  Vedic  deities  are  mainly  deities  of  the 


148 


CATHOLICISM 


light ;  there  is  nothing  that  so  little  troubles  the 
Homeric  gods  as  the  austere  duties  of  justice  and 
judgment.  But  the  inaccurate  psychology  of  the 
Theism  is  here  reflected  in  the  inaccurate  history. 
Since  the  reason  was  released  from  all  duties,  and  the 
conscience  made  "  the  creative  principle,"  the  histori- 
cal Religions  had  to  be  represented  as  processions  or 
projections  from  the  conscience.  This  false  view  of 
Natural  Religion  is  carried  over  into  Revealed,  to 
the  consequent  darkening  and  degradation  of  both. 
For  Christianity  is  conceived  to  be  "  simply  an 
addition  to  "  the  Religion  of  Nature,  the  ideas  of  the 
one  being  neither  superseded  nor  contradicted,  but 
recognized  and  incorporated  by  the  other.1  Thus  as 
the  natural  was  conceived  to  be,  the  spiritual  is  repre- 
sented as  being  ;  those  features  and  qualities  that  have 
been  determined  beforehand  as  essential  to  Religion 
are  transferred  bodily  to  Christianity,  and  it  is  inter- 
preted through  them  and  in  their  light.  The  idea  is 
not  deduced  from  the  sources,  but  conveyed  into 
them,  with  the  result  that  the  Religion  they  contain 
appears  only  as  the  exaggerated  shadow  of  the 
writer's  own  ideal. 

3.  But  the  idea  of  Religion  is  only  preliminary, 
the  main  matter  is  its  historical  realization.  Out  of 
many  passages,  we  may  select  two  to  illustrate  how 
Cardinal  Newman  makes  the  transition  from  Natural 
to  Revealed  Religion,  and  thence  to  his  doctrine  of 
the  Church,  or  simply  to  Christianity  in  history. 


1  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  388. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  149 


"  Revelation  begins  where  Natural  Religion  fails.  The  Re- 
ligion of  Nature  is  a  mere  inchoation,  and  needs  a  complement 
— it  can  have  but  one  complement,  and  that  very  complement 
is  Christianity."  1 

"Revelation  consists  in  the  manifestation  of  the  Invisible 
Divine  Power,  or  in  the  substitution  of  the  Voice  of  a  Lawgiver 
for  the  Voice  of  Conscience.  The  supremacy  of  conscience  is 
the  essence  of  Natural  Religion  ;  the  supremacy  of  Apostle,  or 
Pope,  or  Church,  or  Bishop,  is  the  essence  of  Revealed  ;  and 
when  such  external  authority  is  taken  away,  the  mind  falls  back 
upon  that  inward  guide  which  it  possessed  even  before  Revela- 
tion was  vouchsafed."  2 

So  reason,  dismissed  from  Natural,  has  no  place  in 
Revealed  Religion ;  authority  reigns  in  both.  Re- 
ligion issues  from  it  and  ends  in  it  ;  begins  in  the 
Divine  authority  speaking  as  an  internal  voice,  termi- 
nates in  the  same  authority  externalized  and  made 
visible  in  an  articulate  Lawgiver.  It  is  created,  so 
to  speak,  by  legislation  ;  and  the  more  positive,  i.e. 
statutory,  forensic,  external  the  legislation  is,  it  is  held 
to  be  the  more  excellent,  authoritative,  and  adequate. 
Religion  becomes  a  matter  of  precept  and  rule, 
casuistry  and  ritual.  Conscience  is  the  prophet  and 
forerunner  of  the  church,  which  at  once  fulfils  the 
prophecy  and   supersedes   the   prophet.     But  the 

1  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  486.  It  is  curious  how  completely 
Deistic  is  Newman's  doctrine  both  of  religion  and  of  the 
relation  of  the  two  religions,  the  natural  and  the  supernatural. 
He  stands  here  exactly  where  the  eighteenth  century  stood 
and  reproduces  its  limitations  and  distinctions  with  uncon- 
scious, perhaps,  but  most  notable  accuracy. 

3  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,  c.  ii.  §  2,  p.  124  (second 
edition). 


150 


CA  TIIOLJCISM 


creation  of  the  individual  conscience  is  an  indivi- 
dualistic religion,  which  has  its  character  only  the 
more  emphasized  that  it  appears  disguised  as  a 
Catholicism.  The  false  philosophy  makes  the  idea 
of  Religion  defective  ;  the  defective  idea  of  Religion 
leads  to  the  misinterpretation  of  both  its  nature  and 
action  in  history.  It  is  so  interpreted  that  man's 
relation  to  God  grows  ever  less  personal  and  direct, 
ever  more  formal  and  mediated  ;  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, the  historical  process  must  represent  man  as 
growing  into,  rather  than  out  of,  those  symbols  and 
sanctions  and  mediations  which  Lessing  conceived  to 
belong  to  the  childhood  rather  than  the  manhood  of 
the  race.  The  authority  of  God,  with  its  correlative 
in  the  dependence  and  obedience  of  man,  is  indeed 
the  essence  of  Religion  ;  but  this  authority,  simply 
because  God's,  can  never  become  external,  or  be 
embodied  in  Pope,  or  Church,  or  Bishop.  For  the 
moment  it  were  thus  embodied  it  would  be  so  limited 
and  conditioned  as  to  cease  to  be  absolute  ;  it  would 
have  to  speak  in  the  terms  and  work  by  the  methods 
of  a  human  institution  rather  than  on  the  lines  and 
in  the  ways  of  an  infinite  law.  If  true  Religion  be 
the  worship  of  the  Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  then 
it  is  this  worship,  and  not  submission  to  Pope  or 
Church,  that  is  the  primary  duty  or  true  characteristic 
of  the  religious  man.  And  the  more  filial  the  man 
the  more  perfect  the  worship  ;  the  purer  he  is  in 
spirit  the  fuller  he  is  of  the  truth. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  151 


§11.  The  Roman  as  the  Catholic  Church 
The  matter  then  stands  thus  :—  There  are  three 
ideas,  God,  Religion,  and  the  Church  ;  and  these  three 
are  so  related  that  the  second  and  third  may  be 
regarded  as  progressive  explications  of  the  first.1 
According  to  Cardinal  Newman,  conscience  appre- 
hends God  as  Judge  ;  Religion  is  founded  on  man's 
consciousness  and  confession  of  offence  against  Him  ; 
and  the  Church  at  once  embodies  God's  authority  as 
Judge,  and  satisfies  man's  need  of  expiation.  Unless 
God  were  so  apprehended  Religion  could  not  be  so 
defined  ;  and  unless  God  and  Religion  were  so  un- 
derstood the  Church  could  not  be  conceived  as 
authoritative  and  mediatorial.  The  correspondence 
between  the  ideas  of  God  and  Religion  has  thus  its 
counterpart  and  complement  in  the  correspondence 
between  the  ideas  of  religion  and  the  religious 
society,  the  elements  held  necessary  to  the  one  being 
represented  and  realized  by  the  other.  What  the 
religious  idea  declares  to  be  needful  to  the  pleasing 
of  God,  must  exist  in  the  society  and  be  provided 
for  by  it ;  what  is  said  to  be  of  the  essence  of 
Religion  must  be  possessed  or  affirmed  by  the 
Church. 

1.  Now,  if  this  be  true,  one  thing  is  evident :  the 
narrower  and  more  exclusive  the  religious  idea,  the 
easier  it  is  to  find  a  society  that  has  realized  it ;  but 
the  fuller,  the  richer,  and  more  comprehensive  the 


1  Cf.  ante,  p.  17. 


152 


CA  THOLIC1SM 


idea,  the  less  possible  is  it  to  find  such  a  society. 
A  magnificent  ideal  for  a  Church  may  be  a  mean 
ideal  for  a  Religion  ;  what  makes  a  Catholic  institu- 
tion splendid  may  cover  a  spiritual  and  universal 
faith  with  shame.  The  greater  indeed  ought  never 
to  be  measured  by  the  less  ;  the  less  ought  to  be 
studied  and  valued  through  the  greater.  This  means : 
the  Church  ought  to  be  criticised  and  judged  through 
the  Religion,  not  the  Religion  through  the  Church. 
The  Church  is  good  in  the  degree  that  it  articulates 
and  realizes  the  vital  elements  in  the  Religion  ;  bad 
in  the  degree  that  it  fails  to  do  so.  I  freely  acknow- 
ledge the  pre-eminence  of  Catholicism  as  an  his- 
torical institution  ;  here  she  is  without  a  rival  or  a 
peer.  If  to  be  at  once  the  most  permanent  and 
extensive,  the  most  plastic  and  inflexible,  ecclesi- 
astical organization,  were  the  same  thing  as  to  be 
the  most  perfect  embodiment  and  vehicle  of  Religion, 
then  the  claim  of  Catholicism  were  simply  indis- 
putable. The  man  in  search  of  an  authoritative 
church  may  not  hesitate  ;  once  let  him  assume  that 
a  visible  and  audible  authority  is  of  the  essence  of 
Religion,  and  he  has  no  choice  ;  he  must  become, 
or  get  himself  reckoned,  a  Catholic.  The  Roman 
church  assails  his  understanding  with  invincible 
logic,  and  appeals  to  his  imagination  with  irresistible 
charms.  Her  sons  say  proudly  to  him  :  "  She  alone 
is  catholic,  continuous,  venerable,  august,  the  very 
Church  Christ  founded  and  His  Apostles  instituted 
and  organized.    She  possesses  all  the  attributes  and 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  153 


notes  of  catholicity — an  unbroken  apostolic  succes- 
sion, a  constant  tradition,  an  infallible  Chair,  unity, 
sanctity,  truth,  an  inviolable  priesthood,  a  holy  sacri- 
fice, and  efficacious  sacraments.  The  Protestant 
Churches  are  but  of  yesterday,  without  the  authority, 
the  truth,  or  the  ministries  that  can  reconcile  man 
to  God  ;  they  are  only  a  multitude  of  warring  sects 
whose  confused  voices  but  protest  their  own  in- 
sufficiency, whose  impotence  almost  atones  for  their 
sin  of  schism  by  the  way  it  sets  off  the  might,  the 
majesty,  and  the  unity  of  Rome  In  contrast,  she 
stands  where  her  Master  placed  her,  on  the  rock, 
endowed  with  the  prerogatives  and  powers  He  gave  ; 
and  against  her  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail. 
Supernatural  grace  is  hers  and  miracle ;  it  watched 
over  her  cradle,  has  followed  her  in  all  her  ways 
through  all  her  centuries,  and  has  not  forsaken  her 
even  yet.  She  is  not  like  Protestantism,  a  concession 
to  the  negative  spirit,  an  unholy  compromise  with 
naturalism.  Everything  about  her  is  positive  and 
transcendent ;  she  is  the  bearer  of  Divine  truth,  the 
representative  of  the  Divine  order,  the  Supernatural 
living  in  the  very  heart  and  before  the  very  face  of 
the  Natural.  The  saints,  too,  are  hers,  and  the  man 
she  receives  joins  their  communion,  enjoys  their 
goodly  fellowship,  feels  their  influence,  participates 
in  their  merits  and  the  blessings  they  distribute. 
Their  earthly  life  made  the  past  of  the  Church 
illustrious  ;  their  heavenly  activity  binds  the  visible 
and  invisible  into  unity,  and  lifts  time  into  eternity. 


154 


CATHOLICISM 


To  honour  the  saints  is  to  honour  sanctity  ;  the 
Church  which  teaches  man  to  love  the  holy  helps 
him  to  love  holiness.  And  the  Fathers  are  hers  ; 
their  labours,  sufferings,  martyrdoms,  were  for  her 
sake ;  she  treasures  their  words  and  their  works ; 
her  sons  alone  are  able  to  say,  "  Athanasius  and 
Chrysostom,  Cyprian  and  Augustine,  Anselm  and 
Bernard,  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Duns  Scotus  are  ours, 
their  wealth  is  our  inheritance,  at  their  feet  we  learn 
filial  reverence  and  Divine  wisdom."  But  rich  as  she 
is  in  persons,  she  is  richer  in  truth,  her  worship  is  a 
glorious  sacrament,  her  mysteries  are  a  great  deep. 
Hidden  sanctities  and  meanings  surround  man  ;  the 
sacramental  principle  invests  the  simplest  things,  acts, 
and  rites  with  an  awful  yet  most  blissful  significance, 
turns  all  worship  now  into  a  Divine  parable  which 
speaks  the  deep  things  of  God,  now  into  a  medium 
of  His  gracious  and  consolatory  approach  to  men  and 
man's  awed  and  contrite,  hopeful  and  prevailing, 
approach  to  Him.  Symbols  are  deeper  than  words, 
speak  when  words  become  silent,  gain  where  words 
lose  in  meaning ;  and  so  in  hours  of  holiest  worship 
the  Church  teaches  by  symbols  truths  language  may 
not  utter.  And  yet  she  knows  better  than  any  other 
how  to  use  reasonable  speech ;  the  Fathers  and 
doctors  of  theology  have  been  hers.  For  every 
possible  difficulty  of  the  reason,  or  the  heart,  or 
the  conscience,  she  has  not  one,  but  a  thousand 
solutions.  If  men  are  gentle  of  heart,  and  do  not 
like  to  think  that  all  men  without  the  Church  must 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  155 


be  lost,  distinctions  are  made  as  to  the  body  and 
soul  of  the  Church,  as  to  kinds  and  degrees  of 
ignorance,  softening  stern  doctrines  into  tenderness. 
If  they  have  difficulties  about  Infallibility,  whether 
due  to  papal  sins  and  blunders  in  the  past,  or  free- 
dom in  the  present,  or  progress  in  the  future,  they 
can  easily  be  obviated  by  methods  of  interpretation 
and  known  and  noted  constitutional  limitations.  In 
the  Church  alone  has  casuistry  become  a  science 
so  perfect  as  to  have  a  law  and  a  cure  for  every 
real  or  possible  case  of  conscience  ;  in  her  schools 
theology  has  become  a  completed  science,  which  has 
systematized  her  body  of  truth,  explicated  her  reason, 
justified  her  being  and  her  claims.  And  so  the 
Catholic  Church  is,  in  a  sense  altogether  her  own, 
not  only  an  ecclesiastical  institution,  but  a  Religion, 
a  system  able  to  guide  the  conscience,  satisfy  the 
heart,  regulate  the  conduct,  adjust  and  determine  the 
relations  of  God  and  man." 

2.  Now  this  sublime  and  august  Catholicism  may 
well  and  easily  be  victorious  in  its  appeal  to  the  pious 
imagination  ;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  be  sublime  and 
august  as  an  institution,  and  quite  another  thing  to 
be  true  and  credible  as  a  Religion.  Our  concern 
here  is  not  with  the  appeal  of  Catholicism,  but  with 
its  right  to  make  it ;  not  with  its  sufficiency  for  the 
men  who  grant  its  premisses,  but  with  its  relation  to 
the  Religion  it  professes  to  represent  and  realize  ; 
whether  it  be  or  be  not  equal  to  its  complete  and 
veracious  representation,  whether  it  do  or  do  not 


156 


CATHOLICISM 


possess  energies  equal  to  its  realization  in  man  and 
society.  The  Catholic  church  did  not  create  the 
Religion,  but  was  created  by  it ;  and  it  is  the  func- 
tion of  historical  criticism  to  discover  and  determine 
the  methods  and  factors  of  the  process  which  created 
the  church.  The  questions  involved  are  many  and 
intricate,  but  they  may  be  said  to  reduce  themselves 
to  two  :  first,  the  historical  relations  of  the  created 
institution  or  church,  and  the  creative  Religion  ;  and, 
secondly,  the  adequacy  of  the  institution  to  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  Religion  and  to  the  fulfilment  of  its 
purposes.  The  questions  are  indivisible,  but  distinct. 
If  the  institution  be  so  related  to  the  Religion  as 
to  be  identical  or  interchangeable  with  it,  the  question 
of  adequacy  is,  ipso  facto,  settled  ;  though  even  then 
the  adequacy  of  the  church  to  the  work  of  a  Religion 
will  remain  to  be  discussed.  We  may  distinguish 
the  questions  thus  :  the  one  concerns  the  genesis  of 
Catholicism,  how  and  by  what  historical  process  and 
causes  it  came  to  be ;  but  the  other  concerns  its  be- 
haviour and  action  in  history — whether  it  has  lived 
and  acted  as  a  Society  which  incorporates  the  mind 
and  serves  the  ends  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  two  ques- 
tions combined  relate  to  what  may  be  termed  the 
philosophy  of  Catholicism,  but  the  former  alone  can 
determine  whether  this  must  be  held  identical  with  a 
philosophy  of  the  Christian  Religion. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 57 


§  III.  Whether  it  be  Possible  to  Conceive  Catholicism 
as  a  Development  from  the  Religion  of  Christ 

The  fundamental  and  decisive  question  then  is 
as  to  the  relation  of  Catholicism  to  the  Religion  of 
Christ.  The  question  is  at  once  historical  and  com- 
parative— historical  in  so  far  as  the  connection  of  the 
systems  is  concerned ;  comparative  in  so  far  as  the 
one  supplies  the  norm  by  which  the  other  must  be 
measured  and  criticised.  The  Religion  of  Christ 
must  not  be  judged  by  Catholicism,  but  Catholicism 
by  the  Religion  of  Christ. 

i.  The  differences  between  these  relate  at  once  to 
the  form  and  the  matter  of  faith,  both  to  the  political 
organization  of  the  church  and  the  religious  ideal 
it  embodies.  What  these  differences  are  may  appear 
in  the  course  of  the  discussion.  It  is  enough  to  say 
here  that  they  are  too  radical  to  be  ignored,  and  too 
flagrant  to  be  overlooked.  Protestant  writers  have 
emphasized  them,  and  Catholic  theologians  have  pro- 
posed various  theories  in  explanation.  These  differ- 
ences constituted  in  Newman's  earlier  period  the 
supreme  obstacle  to  his  entering  the  church  of  Rome  ; 
and  the  theory  by  which  the  obstacle  was  surmounted 
and  the  differences  explained  is  expounded  in  the 
book  that  marks  the  crisis  in  his  career.1    The  book 


1  An  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,  1846 
(second  edition).  The  history  of  the  theory  of  development 
in  Roman  Catholic  apologetics  is  a  very  interesting  one,  and 
well  illustrates  the  obligations  of  Catholic  to  what  is  called 


158 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


stands  in  a  sort  of  mediatory  relation  to  his  earlier 
and  later  works ;  in  it  the  logic  which  had  hitherto 
governed  his  mind  reaches  its  consistent  conclusion, 
and  in  it  the  doctrines  of  the  later  works  are  implicit. 
Studied  in  their  light,  sentences  that  were  enigmatical 
to  its  contemporary  critics  become  strangely  lumi- 
nous. As  in  the  Apologia  and  the  Grammar,  a 
natural  scepticism  forms  the  basis  and  justification 
of  a  mechanical  supernaturalism.  Its  thesis  may  be 
stated  thus  :  to  prove  how,  since  reason  or  nature  has 
forsaken  God  and  been  forsaken  of  Him,  a  miraculous 
and  infallible  church  is  a  necessity  to  faith.  The 
philosophical  scepticism  determines  the  definitions, 
gives  point  and  force  to  the  arguments,  presents  the 
real,  though  here  unformulated,  alternative,  Atheism 
or  Catholicity.  "Corruption"  is  but  a  figurative  name 
for  the  "  infallible  Protestant  succession  "  ;  it  is  "that 
state  of  development  which  undoes  its  previous  ad- 
vances," "  a  process  ending  in  dissolution  of  the  body 
of  thought  and  usage  which  was  bound  up  as  it  were 

"  non-Catholic  "  thought.  I  had  meant  to  compare  the  French, 
German,  and  English  forms  of  this  theory,  and  show  how  these 
had  been  affected  by  the  historical  and  philosophical  specu- 
lations of  their  respective  countries.  De  Maistre,  Moehler, 
Goerres,  and  Newman  are  well-known  names  ;  but  Carove, 
Gengler,  Gunther,  though  he  and  his  school  found  small  favour 
at  Rome,  and  Staudenmaier  no  less  deserve  mention.  The 
comparative  neglect  that  seems  to  have  fallen  on  a  more 
remarkable  man  than  any  of  these,  Franz  Baader,  is  not  credit- 
able to  the  Church  that  owned  him.  The  unacknowledged 
obligations  of  Newman  to  French  Catholic  or  neo-Catholic 
writers,  would  be  an  interesting  theme  for  analytic  criticism. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  159 


in  one  system,"  "the  destruction  of  the  norm  or 
type."  1  Development  is  "  the  germination,  growth, 
and  perfection  of  some  living,  that  is  influential,  truth, 
or  apparent  truth,  in  the  minds  of  men  during  a  suffi- 
cient period."  2  These  definitions,  which  but  express 
the  art  of  the  logician  who  so  frames  his  premisses  as 
to  make  his  conclusion  inevitable,  mean,  of  course, 
simply  this  :  outside  Catholicism  there  reigns  corrup- 
tion, or  the  tendency  to  Atheism  ;  inside  it,  there 
proceeds  development,  or  there  exists  a  living  body 
of  truth,  a  real  and  expansive  Religion.  But  the 
artificiality  of  the  definitions,  their  unreality  as  his- 
torical doctrines,  and  their  insufficiency  for  the  argu- 
ment, soon  become  apparent.  For  neither  the  funda- 
mental principle  nor  the  dogmatic  purpose  can  allow 
growth  to  be  any  real  or  sufficient  note  of  truth  ;  an 
authority  is  needed  to  discover  and  ratify  it.  The 
only  healthy  growth  is  one  supernaturally  conducted 
and  authenticated,  and  without  this  authentication  the 
truth  could  not  be  known.  For  unless  the  develop- 
ment proceeded  "under  the  eye"  of  the  external  author- 
ity, which  is  the  only  sure  and  unerring  judge  of  what 
is  true  and  what  is  false,  we  should  not  know  what  to 
believe  and  what  to  reject.  And  so  infallibility  must 
appear  to  guarantee  the  revelation  ;  though,  as  infalli- 
bility can  only  be  conceived  as  revelation  in  exercise, 
the  function  is  rather  curious  than  convincing.  And 
it  is  still  more  curious  that  the  idea  of  infallibility, 


1  pp-  62,  63. 


2  P-  37- 


i6o 


CA  THOLICISM 


which  is  the  clearest  as  it  is  the  most  recent  example 
of  development  within  the  Roman  church,  should  be 
exempted  from  the  operation  of  the  law,  and  con- 
ceived as  from  the  very  beginning  the  duly  consti- 
tuted final  authoritative  court  of  appeal  in  all  matters 
of  faith.  It  is  thus  essentially  a  "provision"  or  ex- 
pedient for  retaining  God  in  our  knowledge,  and  was 
made  necessary  by  the  metaphysical  doubt  which 
would,  left  alone,  have  acted  as  a  solvent  of  faith. 
And  this  simply  means  that  God  being  lost  from 
nature  and  history,  an  artificial  or  mechanical,  as 
distinguished  from  a  supernatural,  method  has  to 
be  devised  for  bringing  Him  back.  Newman  holds 
"  there  can  be  no  combination  on  the  basis  of  truth 
without  an  organ  of  truth  "  ;  but  his  organ  is  an  organi- 
zation, with  the  natural  history,  the  modi  vivendi  et 
operandi  proper  to  one.  He  does  not  say,  "  There 
are  no  eternal  truths  "  :  but  he  does  say,  "  There  are 
none  sufficiently  commanding  to  be  the  basis  of 
public  union  and  action.  The  only  general  persua- 
sive in  matters  of  conduct  is  authority." 1  If  Religion 
is  to  live,  "  there  is  absolute  need  of  a  spiritual  supre- 
macy," or  "  a  supreme  authority  ruling  and  reconciling 
individual  judgments  by  a  Divine  right  and  a  recog- 
nized wisdom."  3  Metaphysical  scepticism  may  seem 
a  curious  basis  for  belief  in  what  has  been  called  the 
most,  supernatural  form  of  Christianity  ;  but  it  is  New- 
man's. 3 


1  p.  128.  2  p.  127. 

3  For  a  more  detailed  exposition  and  criticism  of  Newman's 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  l6l 


2.  But  we  have  had  enough  of  the  philosophical 
question,  which  is  here  of  interest  only  as  showing 
the  logical  coherence  and  continuity  of  ideas  in 
Newman's  own  mind.  We  must  discuss  with  more 
care  and  in  fuller  detail  the  historical  thesis :  How 
does  this  infallible  Catholic  church  stand  related  to 
the  Religion  of  Jesus  Christ  ?  The  reply,  as  con- 
ceived by  the  Catholic,  is,  the  two  are  one  ;  the 
Church  is  the  Religion.  Why,  then,  do  they  so  differ  ? 
Why  do  we  find  so  many  things  in  Catholicism  that 
we  do  not  find  in  the  Religion  ?  The  answer  of  the 
Catholic  is — the  differences  are  those  of  growth  and 
logical  evolution  ;  they  are  notes  and  evidences  of 
life,  due  to  the  continuous  and  divinely  guided  expan- 
sion of  the  organism  that  came  into  being  nineteen 
centuries  ago.  The  theory  of  development  is  thus 
an  "  hypothesis  to  account  for  a  difficulty  " 1 — the 
procession  or  evolution  of  Catholicism  from  what  was 
in  so  many  respects  radically  unlike  it,  primitive 
Christianity.  But  the  theory  was  not  simply  a 
method  of  explaining  the  differences  between  the 
religion  which  Christ  created  and  the  church  which 
the  Pope  governs ;  it  was,  on  the  one  hand,  an 
apology  for  Catholicism,  and  on  the  other,  for  the 
man  who  had  been  compelled  to  embrace  it.  The  book 
was  in  the  strictest  possible  sense  an  earlier  Apologia 
pro  vita  sua.     But  polemical  purpose  is  a  serious 

doctrine  of  development,  and  a  more  adequate  discussion  of 
the  subject  as  a  whole,  see  The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modem  Theo- 
logy ■>  PP-  25  ff.       1  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,  p.  27. 

i  r 


1 62 


CA  TIIOLICISM 


obstacle  to  scientific  discussion.  History,  as  Newman 
handles  it,  is  but  dialectic,  a  method  of  establishing 
a  dogma  or  making  good  a  proposition.  No  man 
could  be  less  the  ideal  critic,  or  constructive  historian, 
than  he,  or  be  more  deft  in  the  use  of  historical 
material  for  controversial  ends.  As  he  conceived  the 
matter,  his  "  Development  of  Doctrine "  ought  to 
have  been  a  philosophy,  not  only  of  Catholicism,  but 
of  Christianity.  But  it  is  too  completely  without  the 
critical  and  scientific  spirit  to  be  either.  What  he 
termed  "  development "  was  not  what  either  philo- 
sophy or  Science  means  when  it  uses  the  word.  For 
he  refused  to  apply  the  process  to  the  collective  result, 
keeping  out  of  its  hands  the  infallibility,  which,  as 
the  most  abnormal  and  least  intrinsic  organ  or  faculty, 
had  the  greatest  need  to  be  explained  ;  and  he  con- 
ceived the  process  in  a  merely  logical  rather  than  a 
really  natural  and  scientific  way.  Now,  let  us  "  grant 
the  principle  of  development,  but  demand  that  it  be 
philosophically  stated  and  rigorously  applied.  To 
speak  in  the  current  phraseology,  we  must  have  the 
organism,  but  also  the  environment ;  and  these  must  be 
studied  and  exhibited  in  their  mutual  intercourse  and 
reciprocal  action,  the  elements  they  respectively  con- 
tribute to  the  result  being  carefully  distinguished  and 
appraised.  The  organism  may  modify  the  environ- 
ment, but  the  environment  may  still  more  radically 
modify  and  even  vary  the  organism.  The  degree 
and  incidence  of  change  is  not  to  be  settled  before- 
hand by  a  series  of  purely  a  priori  definitions  and 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 63 


tests,  like  Newman's  sacred  seven,1  but  by  actual 
observation  of  the  process,  analysis  of  its  conditions, 
discovery  of  its  factors,  determination  of  the  path  and 
rate  of  movement." 

The  problem,  then,  as  to  the  evolution  of  the 
Church,  the  headship  of  the  Supreme  Pontiff,  and  his 
ex  Cathedra  infallibility,  is  historical,  and  soluble 
only  by  the  methods  of  historical  research,  which 
does  not  begin  by  a  priori  definitions  and  determina- 
tions of  one  class  of  growths  as  "  corruptions,"  and 
another  as  "  developments,"  but  simply  observes  the 
process,  the  factors,  and  the  results.  Hence  we  must 
do  two  things,  (a)  find  the  germ,  viz.,  the  body  or 
system  of  truth,  in  its  primitive  or  least  developed  state, 
and  (/3)  study  the  successive  conditions  under  which  it 
lived,  their  action  on  it,  its  action  on  them.  The  germ 
is  simple,  but  the  conditions  are  complex  and  varied. 
It  is  a  new  Religion  :  but  it  lives  surrounded  by  a 
multitude  of  ancient  Religions,  on  the  soil,  within 
the  atmosphere,  under  the  light,  amid  the  customs, 
memories,  manners,  associations  they  had  created.  It 
is  a  body  of  beliefs :  but  the  beliefs  are  construed 
and  formulated  into  doctrines  in  cities  where  philo- 
sophy had  been  studied,  often  by  men  who  had  been 

1  The  "  tests  of  true  development "  are  :  "  the  preservation  of 
the  idea";  "continuity  of  principles";  "power  of  assimila- 
tion"; "early  anticipation";  "logical  sequence";  "preser- 
vative additions";  "  chronic  continuance  "  (pp.  64  ff.).  These 
are  but  so  many  principles  of  prejudgment.  So  independent  is 
he  of  historical  method  that  he  does  not  condescend  to  any 
critical  search  after  "  the  idea "  that  was  to  be  preserved. 


164 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


trained  in  the  schools,  or  had  felt  the  influence  of 
Hellenic  or  Hellenistic,  Latin  or  Oriental  speculation. 
The  thought  of  the  most  catholic  Father  bears  on  its 
face  the  image  of  his  time,  and  the  superscription  of 
his  place.  Clement,  Origen,  and  Athanasius  are  men 
of  Alexandria,  with  problems  that  differ  according  to 
their  differing  ages  ;  but  they  are  as  distinctively  sons 
of  their  city  as  Philo,  Ammonius,  or  Plotinus.  They 
speak,  as  it  were,  in  its  idiom,  and  have  their  minds, 
methods  of  exegesis  and  argument,  modes  of  thought 
and  doctrinal  apprehension  saturated  with  its  spirit. 
In  the  making  of  Augustine  Plato  has  been  as  power- 
ful as  Paul ;  and,  if  the  Kingdom  of  God  suggested 
his  ideal  civitas,  imperial  Rome  determined  its  form. 
Then  the  Religion  could  not  act  and  extend  without 
a  polity ;  but  as  it  grew  on  the  soil  of  Judaism,  lived 
in  Greek  cities  and  within  the  Roman  Empire,  first 
under  its  ban,  and  then,  in  the  very  moment  of  its 
dissolution,  in  alliance  with  it,  the  political  type  was 
not  uniform,  but  followed  the  model  which  prevailed 
in  its  successive  homes.  Its  base  was  Jewish,  its 
middle  stratum  Greek  ;  but  its'upper  and  final,  imperial 
and  Roman.  In  its  earliest  form  Christianity  might 
be  described  as  a  Religion  which  had  stooped  to  use 
the  simplest  polity  ;  but  in  its  Roman  form  it  might 
be  more  correctly  described  as  a  polity  which  had 
appropriated  the  name  of  a  Religion.  For  after  the 
Church  had  lived  among  Jews,  Greeks,  and  Romans, 
and  had  affected,  and  been  affected  by,  their  respec- 
tive faiths,  philosophies,  and  polities,  penetrated  and 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  165 


modified  as  they  all  were  by  Oriental  elements,  it 
was  no  longer  the  simple  and  rudimentary  structure 
known  to  the  Apostles ;  it  had  become  a  highly 
developed  and  skilfully  articulated  organism,  capable 
not  only  of  independent  political  life,  but  of  imperial 
or  sovereign  action.  And  so  when  Roman  Caesar 
ceased  to  rule  the  West,  the  Roman  Bishop  became 
his  substitute  and  successor.  It  was  as  organized  by 
the  spirit  and  genius  of  the  ancient  Empire  that  Chris- 
tianity met  the  newer  peoples.  It  thus  appeared  to 
them  the  representative  at  once  of  the  new  Religion, 
the  Roman  State,  and  the  old  civilization  ;  and  so 
entered  into  conditions  favourable  to  further  develop- 
ments, especially  of  the  imperial  order.  The  environ- 
ment was  thus  ceaselessly  changing,  now  from  internal, 
now  from  external,  now  from  concurrent  causes  ;  and 
its  every  change  affected  and  varied  the  organism. 
Movement  is  complex,  development  is  conditioned  ; 
has  its  causes,  but  also  its  occasions  ;  its  laws,  but 
also  its  circumstances.  The  organism  cannot  be 
isolated  from  its  environment,  but  must  be  studied  in 
and  through  it.  The  mighty  fabric  of  the  Roman 
church  is  a  development ;  no  man  will  question  it ; 
but  the  significance  of  the  development  for  the  sys- 
tem, for  Religion,  and  for  history,  must  be  determined, 
not  by  a  scries  of  arbitrary  tests,  but  by  the  rigorous 
methods  of  historical  analysis  and  criticism. 

3.  If,  then,  we  follow  the  historical  method,  our  first 
duty  will  be  to  find  the  primary  form,  the  organism 
in  its  aboriginal  state.    Newman,  indeed,  does  not 


166 


CATHOLICISM 


trouble  himself  to  discover  this  form  ;  but  starts  with  an 
imaginary  picture,  marked  by  manifold  inaccuracies, 
painted  without  the  slightest  reference  to  the  sources 
or  what  in  them  is  material.  The  student  of  develop- 
ment, however,  must  begin  at  the  beginning — with 
the  New  Testament  ideal  of  Religion.  Tradition 
cannot  be  here  trusted  ;  literature  alone  can.  Tradi- 
tion is  uncertain,  unfixed  ;  its  tendency  is  to  grow,  to 
mingle  early  and  late,  to  throw  the  emphasis  on  the 
most  recent,  to  fuse  in  the  heated  crucible  of  the 
imagination  the  marvellous  and  the  unreal  with  the 
actual  and  the  real.  But  the  written  abides ;  its 
words  do  not  change,  do  not  augment  the  history 
with  fact  or  marvel,  only  become,  as  men  grow 
critical,  more  luminous,  veracious,  graphic,  able  to  set 
man,  however  distant  in  time,  like  an  ear-  and  eye- 
witness, face  to  face  with  the  things  he  reads.  And 
here  our  literary  sources  are  clear,  credible,  truthful. 
We  know  the  first  century  as  we  do  not  know  the 
second,  or  even  the  third.  The  founding  of  the 
Religion  is  a  more  legible  page  of  history  than  the 
organization  of  the  church ;  the  earlier  throws  more 
light  on  the  later  period  than  the  later  on  the  earlier. 
Indeed,  we  may  say  the  earlier  history  is  written 
in  lines  of  living  light.  If,  then,  we  are  to  follow 
the  only  method  valid  in  historical  science,  we  must 
begin  with  our  oldest  written  sources  ;  on  every 
matter  connected  with  the  first  or  parent  form,  the 
real  starting  -  point  of  the  evolutional  process,  their 
authority  must  be  held  final.    This  is  no  dogma  of 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  I67 


Protestantism,  but  a  simple  necessity  of  scientific 
method,  which  is  here,  too,  the  method  of  nature  and 
assured  knowledge.  Light  lies  on  the  threshold  ;  it 
is  only  after  we  have  crossed  it  that  the  shadows 
begin  to  thicken. 

§  IV.  Hoiv  the  Priesthood  came  into  the  Religion 

1.  Now,  what  is  the  New  Testament  ideal  of 
Religion  ?  Its  material  or  determinative  conception 
is,  as  we  have  already  argued,  the  doctrine  of  God. 
"lie  appears  primarily,  not,  as  Newman  so  strenuously 
argued,  as  a  God  of  judgment  and  justice,  but  of 
mercy  and  grace,  the  Father  of  man,  who  needs  not 
to  be  appeased,  but  is  gracious,  propitious,  finds  the 
Propitiator,  provides  the  propitiation.  His  own  Son 
is  the  one  Sacrifice,  Priest,  and  Mediator,  appointed 
of  God  to  achieve  the  reconciliation  of  man.  Men 
are  God's  sons  ;  filial  love  is  their  primary  duty, 
fraternal  love  their  common  and  equal  obligation. 
Worship  does  not  depend  on  sacred  persons,  places, 
or  rites,  but  is  a  thing  of  spirit  and  truth.  The  best 
prayer  is  secret  and  personal ;  the  man  who  best 
pleases  God  is  not  the  scrupulous  Pharisee,  but  the 
penitent  publican.  Measured  by  the  standard  of  a 
sacerdotal  Religion,  Jesus  was  not  a  pious  person  ; 
He  spoke  no  word,  did  no  act,  that  implied  a  priest- 
hood for  His  people,  He  enforced  no  sacerdotal 
observance,  instituted  no  sacerdotal  order,  promul- 
gated no  sacerdotal  law  ;  but  simply  required  that 
His   people  should  be  perfect  as  their  Father  in 


CATHOLICISM 


heaven  is  perfect.  And  so  what  He  founded  was  a 
society  to  realize  His  own  ideal,  a  Kingdom  of  heaven, 
spiritual,  eternal,  which  came  without  observation  ; 
a  realm  where  the  will  of  God  is  law,  and  the  law 
is  love,  and  the  citizens  are  the  loving  and  the 
obedient."  The  fact  is  too  remarkable,  too  charac- 
teristic and  essential  to  the  mind  of  Jesus  to 
be  described  as  accidental,  or  as  clue  to  His 
assumption  of  these  things  as  understood.  On  the 
contrary  we  have  to  note  His  most  careful  and  even 
scrupulous  abstention  from  the  use  of  all  terms 
that  could  imply  the  continuance  of  any  priesthood 
within  His  Church.  The  abstention  must  have  been 
difficult ;  indeed,  nothing  could  have  been  harder  than 
to  avoid  the  use  of  terms  which  were  on  all  men's  lips 
when  they  spoke  about  religion.  Yet  the  only  use 
He  made  of  the  term  "temple"  was  to  apply  it  to  His 
body.  He  never  gave  the  name  of  priest  either  to 
Himself  or  to  any  disciple.  The  only  sacrifice  He 
asked  man  to  offer  was  the  mercy  which  God 
loved.  These  abstentions  therefore  are  express  and 
designed  ;  a  priesthood  with  its  offices  was  no  part  of 
His  mind  and  purpose.  And  as  with  His  own  mind, 
so  was  it  in  the  Apostolic  Church  and  in  the 
Apostolic  epistles.  The  people  the  apostles  represent 
and  address,  the  society  they  describe,  may  have  in 
its  collective  being  a  priestly  character,  but  is  without 
an  official  priesthood.  It  has  "  apostles,"  "  prophets," 
"  overseers "  or  "  bishops,"  "  elders,"  "  pastors," 
"  teachers,"  "  ministers  "  or  "  deacons,"  "  evangelists  "  ; 
but  it  has  no  "  priests,"  and  no  man,  or  body  of  men, 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM     1 69 


who  bear  the  name,  hold  the  place,  exercise  the 
functions,  or  fulfil  the  duties  of  the  priest,  or  the 
priesthood,  as  they  were  known  in  ancient  Religions. 
It  has  no  temple,  save  either  the  living  Saviour  or  the 
living  man  ;  it  asks  from  men  no  sacrifices,  save  those 
of  the  spirit  and  the  life ;  it  has  no  sensuous  sanctities. 
"  Its  Founder  who,  we  repeat,  never  called  Himself 
a  priest,  stood  to  the  priesthood  of  His  land  and  time 
in  radical  antagonism  ;  the  writers  who  apply  to  Him 
the  name  High  Priest,  and  describe  His  work  as  a 
sacrifice,  carefully  deny  any  similar  name  to  any  class 
of  His  people,  and  decline  to  attach  any  similar  idea 
to  any  of  their  acts  or  instruments  of  worship.  And 
this  may  be  said  to  represent  on  the  negative  side  the 
absolutely  new  and  distinctive  character  of  the 
Religion  of  Christ.  It  stood  among  the  ancient 
faiths  as  a  strange  and  extraordinary  thing — a 
priestless  Religion,  without  the  symbols,  sacrifices, 
ceremonies,  officials,  hitherto  held,  save  by  prophetic 
Hebraism,  to  be  the  religious  all  in  all.  And  it  so 
stood,  because  its  God  did  not  need  to  be  propitiated, 
but  was  propitious,  supplying  the  only  Priest  and 
Sacrifice  equal  to  His  honour,  and  the  sins  and  wants 
of  man.  In  that  hour  God  became  a  new  being  to 
man,  and  man  knew  himself  to  be  more  than  a  mere 
creature  and  subject — a  son  of  the  living  God."  1 

2.  Here,  then,  is  the  aboriginal  germ — a  Religion 
without  a  priesthood,  or  any  provision  for  it ;  as  such 


1  The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  pp.  48,  49. 


1 7°  CA  THOLICISM 


an  exception  among  the  Religions  and  an  anomaly 
to  men  ;  and  because  of  its  anomalous  character,  lay- 
ing its  earliest  professors  open  to  the  odious  charge 
of  Atheism.  But  Catholicism  is  here  the  precise 
opposite  of  this  aboriginal  Religion,  this  Christianity 
of  Christ  and  1 1  is  apostles.  The  priesthood  is  essen- 
tial to  it ;  without  the  priesthood  it  could  have  no 
existence,  no  Saviour  present  in  its  services,  no  mass, 
no  sacraments,  no  confessional ;  in  a  word,  no  worship 
for  God,  no  comfort  and  no  command  for  man.  Here, 
then,  is  the  first  point  for  the  historic  inquirer :  How 
and  whence  came  the  idea  and  office  of  the  priest- 
hood into  Christianity?  Was  it  evolved  from  within,  or 
incorporated  from  without?  Was  it  a  latent  organ  or 
capability  legitimately  evoked  in  the  original,  or  was  it 
a  foreign  or  superadded  element  due  to  the  conditions 
under  which  the  organism  lived?  Without  attempting 
an  exhaustive  discussion  of  these  questions,  it  will  be 
enough  to  say  that  the  sacerdotal  idea  has  a  perfectly 
distinct  history  of  its  own  ;  the  date  of  its  first 
appearance  in  the  Church  can  be  fixed,  its  rise  can  be 
traced,  its  growth  measured,  its  action  on  the  sub- 
stance and  organization  of  Christianity  analyzed  and 
exhibited.  The  New  Testament  did  not  know  it,  and 
in  the  second  as  in  the  first  century  it  is  still  un- 
known ;  but  the  tendencies  creative  of  it  are  active. 
The  apologists  labour  strenuously  to  explain  how 
Christianity,  though  without  the  sacerdotalism  charac- 
teristic of  all  the  then  licit  or  recognized  worships,  is 
yet  a  Religion.    In  the  Didache  the  prophet  has 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    17 1 


displaced  the  Priest.1  Ignatius  may  have  high 
episcopal,  but  he  has  no  sacerdotal  ideas  ;  and  of  these 
his  friend  Polycarp  is  also  free.  To  Justin  Martyr, 
Christians  were  the  true  high-priestly  race  ;  they  offer 
the  sacrifices  well-pleasing  to  God.3  With  Irenaeus 
the  sacerdotal  dignity  is  the  portion  of  the  just ;  and 
the  sanctified  heart,  the  holy  life,  faith,  obedience, 
righteousness,  are  the  sacrifices  God  loves.3  The 
choicest  altar  was  the  service  of  the  needy ;  to 
minister  to  man  was  to  sacrifice  to  God.  There  was 
no  order  possessed  of  the  exclusive  right  to  officiate 
in  things  sacred,  exercising  their  functions  by  virtue 
of  some  inalienable  grace.  The  layman  might 
baptize  or  celebrate  the  Eucharist ;  there  was  "  liberty 
of  prophesying " ;  the  individual  society  or  church 
could  exercise  discipline,  could  even  institute  or 
depose  its  officers.  But  as  the  second  century  ended 
and  the  third  opened,  significant  signs  of  change 
begin  to  appear.  Tertullian  in  Africa  speaks  of  the 
"  Ordo  sacerdotalis  "  and  the  "  Sacerdotalia  munera  "  ; 
and  describes  the  bishop  as  "  summus  sacerdos  "  and 
"  pontifex  maximus."1  Hippolytus  in  Italy  claims 
for  himself,  as  successor  of  the  Apostles,  the  high- 
priesthood  ; 5  while  Origen  in  Alexandria,  though  he 

1  Chap.  xiii.  3  ;  cf.  Clemens  Rom.  chapp.  xl.,  xliii.,  xliv. 

2  Dial,  chapp.  cxiv.-exvii.  ;  cf.  Apol.  i.  chapp.  Ixvi.,  lxvii. 

3  Adv.  Oinn.  Haeres.  book  iv.  chapp.  viii.  3,  xvii.  4  ;  bk.  v.  c. 

xxxiv.  3. 

4  De  Exit.  Cast.  7  ;  Dc  Praescr.  Haer.  4 1  ;  De  Baptis.  17;  De 

Pudic.  1. 

5  Rcjut.  O/nn.  Har,  i.  Proem. 


1 72 


CA  TMOLICISM 


holds  to  the  universal  priesthood  and  spiritual 
sacrifices,1  also  indicates  the  likeness  of  the  new 
ministers  to  the  ancient  priests  and  Levites.2  By  the 
middle  of  the  century  the  hands  of  Cyprian  have 
clothed  the  new  clergy  in  the  dignities  of  the  old 
priesthood,  and  provided  them  with  appropriate  sacri- 
ficial functions  and  intercessory  duties.  "The  develop- 
ment was  not  complete,  but  it  was  begun.  The  ancient 
ideal  died  hard  ;  reminiscences  of  it  may  be  found  in 
Augustine,  in  Leo  the  Great,  even  in  Aquinas,  nay,  in 
the  very  Catholicism  of  to-day  ;  but  they  only  help  to 
illustrate  the  continuity  of  the  evolutional  process  and 
measure  the  vastness  of  the  change."3 

Now,  why  was  it  that  the  sacerdotal  element 
appeared  so  suddenly  and  grew  so  rapidly  ?  What 
were  the  causes  of  its  so  sudden  genesis  and  growth  ? 
In  the  Religion  as  instituted  by  Jesus  Christ,  taught 
and  practised  by  His  Apostles,  received  and  observed 
by  their  disciples,  it  had  no  place  ;  and  so  its  rise 
could  not  be  due  to  any  process  of  logical  and 
immanent  evolution,  of  detached  and  self-regulated 
development.  But  what  was  not  possible  to  the 
isolated,  was  necessary  to  the  conditioned  organism. 
The  Religion  was  new,  but  humanity  was  old  ;  and,  if 
the  new  lived  within  the  bosom  of  the  old,  it  was  by 
a  process  of  mutual  assimilation,  the  new  pervading 


1  Homil.  in  Lev.  ix.  9,  10  (Ed.  Lorn.  vol.  ix.  pp.  360-364). 

2  In  Evang.  Ioh.  torn.  i.  3  (Ed.  Lom.  vol.  i.  p.  9). 

3  The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modem  Theology,  p.  105. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 73 


and  changing  the  old,  but  the  old  also  penetrating 
and  modifying  the  new.  "  Men  found  it  easier  to 
adjust  the  Religion  to  themselves  than  themselves 
to  the  Religion.  Their  minds  were  not  sheets  of 
clean  white  paper  on  which  its  truths  could  be  clearly 
written,  but  pages  crowded  with  the  records,  habits, 
customs,  beliefs,  of  immemorial  yesterdays  ;  and  the 
lines  of  the  new  could  not  but  often  mingle  and  blend 
with  those  of  the  ancient  writing.  A  Religion  without 
a  priesthood  was  what  no  man  had  known  ;  a  sacred 
order  on  earth  seemed  as  necessary  to  worship  as  the 
very  being  of  the  gods  in  heaven.  The  temple  was 
the  centre  of  the  State,  but  it  was  idle  without  a 
priesthood,  and  without  it  the  oracle  was  dumb."1 
How,  then,  were  men,  inured  by  age-long  custom  and 
tradition  to  priestly  Religions,  able  all  at  once  to 
construe  and  realize  one  altogether  priestless?  They 
were  helped  at  first  by  two  things  :  its  very  strange- 
ness, its  absolute  antithesis  to  the  familiar  and 
received  ;  and,  next,  by  its  appearing  as  a  new  opinion 
or  belief  which  spread  by  teaching  and  discourse,  or 
as  a  system  of  philosophy  and  social  help  rather  than 
as  an  organized  worship.  But  the  more  its  character 
as  a  Religion  became  established  and  defined,  the 
more  men  tended  to  interpret  it  through  the  old 
Religions,  seeking  in  it  the  elements  they  had  known 
in  them. 

And  the  historical  relations  of  the  Christian  Faith, 


1  The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  p.  106. 


174 


CA  THOHCISM 


as  child  and  heir  of  Judaism,  intensified  this  tend- 
ency.    It    had  come  to  fulfil  the  Law  and  the 
Prophets  ;  the  New  Testament  did  not  exist  because 
of  the  Old,  but  the  Old  had  existed  for  the  sake  of  the 
New.    Christianity  was  no  accident,  was  indeed  older 
than  creation,  had  been  designed  from  eternity,  and 
appeared  as  the  result  and  goal  of  all  past  history  ; 
but  it  was  no  mere  continuation  of  what  had  been, 
was  rather  as  its  end,  its  supersession  and  fulfilment. 
The  sub-apostolic  Fathers  and  apologists  more  or 
less  consistently  maintained  this,  the  apostolic  posi- 
tion.   They  argued  with  the  Jew,  that  the  anticipa- 
tions of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testament  were  evidences 
of  His  truth  ;  and  with  the  Greek,  that  the  relation  of 
the  New  Testament  to  the  Old  proved  Christianity 
to  be  the  result  of  a  Divine  purpose  running  through 
the  ages.    But  the  parallel  of  the  Testaments  easily 
became  absolute,  a  forgetfulness  of  their  essential 
differences.    The  use  of  the  Old  to  authenticate  the 
New  tended  to  invest  the  Old  with  equal  or  even 
greater  authority,  especially  as,  alongside  the  incom- 
pleteness of  the  Christian  canon,  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures stood   canonically  complete.     They  were  the 
sacred  books  of  Jews  and  Christians  alike,  authorita- 
tive for  both,  revered  and  believed  by  both,  held  by 
both  to  be  regulative  of  faith  and  conduct,  affording 
to  both  the  one  solid  common  ground  of  discussion 
and  argument.    And  so,  as  was  natural,  these  Scrip- 
tures lost  in  historical  but  gained  in  religious  and 
ecclesiastical  significance ;  became  less  a  record  of 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM     1 75 


what  had  been,  and  more  a  norm  or  principle  regula- 
tive of  what  ought  to  be.  Indeed,  it  is  the  simple 
truth  to  say  that  they  were  a  far  more  active  and 
efficient  factor  in  the  organization  of  the  Church  than 
even  the  apostolic  writings.  For  these  latter  were 
but  the  memorials  of  missionaries  and  missionary 
churches  :  but  the  former  exhibited  a  realized 
Religion,  what  was  conceived  as  pre-Christian  Christi- 
anity. The  old  Religion  had  its  priesthood,  the  new 
had  its  clergy,  and  so  these  two  were  made  parallel. 
Once  they  had  been  made  parallel,  it  was  necessary 
to  do  the  same  for  the  worships  ;  and  once  they  were 
assimilated,  the  New  Testament  ceased  to  fulfil  the 
Old,  the  Old  reigned  in  the  New.  And  this  is  what 
Cyprian  shows  us  ;  he  represents  the  victory  of  the 
older  Religions,  the  rejuvenescence  of  Judaism,  the 
entrance  of  the  hieratic  idea  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Christ,  changing  it  into  a  kingdom  of  priests.  Invet- 
erate and  invariable  association  demanded  and 
worked  the  change,  but  the  relation  of  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  Scriptures  supplied  the  opportunity  and 
forms  for  its  accomplishment.  Without  the  univer- 
sal sacerdotalism  it  would  not  have  been  necessary  ; 
without  the  historical  relation  it  would  not  have  been 
possible  ;  the  co-existence  and  co-operation  of  the 
two  made  it  not  only  natural,  but  inevitable. 

§  V.    How  the  Church  Became  a  Monarchy 

I.  The  rise  and  growth  of  the  sacerdotal  idea  in 
Christianity  can,  then,  be  explained  by  the  principle 


176 


CA  THOLICISM 


of  development,  but  it  must  be  development  scienti- 
fically interpreted  and  historically  applied.  The  idea 
then  appears  as  the  creation,  not  of  the  isolated  or 
detached,  but  of  the  related  organism,  or  simply  of 
the  environment  within  which  it  lives  and  moves. 
Yet  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  evolutionary 
process.  Hand  in  hand  with  the  change  in  the  idea 
and  functions  of  the  ministry  comes  a  change  in  its 
place  and  in  the  relation  which  it  bears  to  the 
Church.  And  here,  in  order  to  see  the  process  in  its 
completeness,  we  must  study  it  from  within  as 
well  as  from  without ;  in  other  words,  in  relation  to 
what  may  be  termed  the  articulation  of  the  organism 
— or  the  organization  of  the  Christian  society. 
Catholic  polity  is  one,  New  Testament  polity  another; 
they  are  not  only  dissimilars,  but  opposites.  The 
rise  of  the  monarchical  and  imperial  polity,  i.e.,  the 
Catholic  papacy,  within  the  Christian  Church,  is 
explicable  on  the  ground  of  a  conditioned  or  natural 
development,  but  not  of  one  unconditioned  or  super- 
natural. Accept  the  supernaturalism  of  Catholic  dog- 
matics, and  the  rise  of  the  infallible  headship  does 
not  admit  of  explanation  ;  but  apply  to  it  the  scien- 
tific analysis  of  the  historical  method,  and  it  stands 
explained.  For  what  on  this  matter  is  the  testimony 
of  the  oldest  literature  ?  There  is  no  evidence  that 
Jesus  ever  created,  or  thought  of  creating,  an 
organized  society.  There  is  no  idea  He  so  little 
emphasizes  as  the  idea  of  the  Church.  The  use  of 
the  term  is  attributed  to  Him  but  twice — once  it 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 77 


occurs  in  the  local  or  congregational  sense,  and  once 
in  the  universal  ;  but  only  so  as  to  define  His  own 
sole  activity  and  supremacy.  His  familiar  idea  is  the 
Kingdom  of  God  or  of  heaven  ;  but  this  Kingdom  is 
without  organization,  and  incapable  of  being  organ- 
ized ;  indeed,  though  the  ideas  may  here  and  there 
coincide,  it  is  essentially  the  contrary  and  contrast 
of  what  is  now  understood  as  the  Catholic  church, 
whether  Roman  or  Anglican.  Further,  in  the 
Church  of  the  New  Testament  the  politico- 
monarchical  idea  does  not  exist ;  there  is  no  shadow, 
or  anticipation,  or  prophecy  of  it.  The  churches  are 
not  organized,  do  not  constitute  a  formal  unity,  have 
a  fraternal  but  no  corporate  relation,  have  no 
common  or  even  local  hierarchy  ;  they  are  divided  by 
differences  that  preclude  the  very  idea  of  an  official 
infallible  head.  Supremacy  belongs  to  no  man ; 
there  is  no  bishop,  in  the  modern  sense,  over  any 
church,  or  over  the  whole  Church  ;  no  recognition  of 
Rome  as  a  seat  of  authority,  the  only  holy  or  pre- 
eminent city  being  Jerusalem.  The  question  as  to 
Peter  is  very  significant.  He  may  be  the  rock  on 
which  the  Church  is  to  be  built ;  the  promises  made 
to  him  may  be  taken  in  the  highest  possible  sense  ; 
but  what  then  ?  There  is  no  evidence  that  what  was 
promised  to  him  was  assured  to  his  successors,  no 
evidence  that  he  had  any  successors,  least  of  all  that 
his  successors,  if  he  had  any,  were  the  bishops  of 
Rome,  or  that  Rome  in  any  way  entered  into  the 
thought  of  Jesus.    Indeed,  so  far  as  the  New  Testa- 


178 


CA  THOLICISM 


meat  is  concerned,  there  is  no  evidence  that  Peter 
ever  was  in  Rome,  or  had  any  relation  to  it,  or  held 
any  office  or  did  any  work  in  connection  with  the 
Roman  church.  Some  things  concerning  him  we 
do  certainly  know — that  he  was  an  apostle  of  the 
circumcision ;  lived  and  preached  many  years  in 
Jerusalem  ;  was  there  a  man  of  reputation  and  a  pillar  ; 
visited  Antioch,  where  he  at  first  befriended  the 
Gentiles,  then  withdrew  and  was  publicly  rebuked  by 
Paul.  That  is  our  last  clear,  authentic  glimpse  of 
him.  Whether  the  Babylon,  whence  he  sent  an  epistle 
by  no  means  either  cosmopolitan  or  catholic,  but 
expressly  provincial  and  particular,  was  the  city  really 
so  named  or  a  metaphor  for  Rome,  is  a  point  on  which 
scholars  have  differed  ;  and  is  at  least  too  uncertain 
to  admit  of  clear  and  final  decision.  On  the  other 
hand,  Paul's  successive  homes  stand  as  full  in  the 
light  as  Peter's  retreat  into  the  darkness  ;  from  him 
we  know  something  of  Rome  and  its  church.  He 
addressed  to  it  his  greatest  epistle,  visited  it,  suffered 
imprisonment  in  the  city,  dated  from  it  various 
letters  ;  but  never,  either  in  the  epistle  sent  to  Rome 
or  in  those  sent  from  it,  though  he  mentions  many 
persons,  most  of  them  mere  obscure  names  to  us,  does 
he  either  directly  or  implicitly  allude  to  Peter.  This 
is  a  remarkable  fact ;  no  mere  conventional  argument 
from  silence  ;  for  Paul  was  a  man  scrupulous  in  his 
courtesies,  plain-spoken  in  his  polemics,  incapable  of 
omitting  from  his  record  what  would  have  been  the 
most  illustrious  name  of  the  local  church,  especially 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 79 


as  it  was  one  he  had  so  expressly  used  in  his  contro- 
versial epistles.  Now,  what  does  all  this  signify  ? 
Papal  infallibility,  head  and  crown  as  it  is  of  the 
Catholic  system,  is  the  most  tremendous  claim  ever 
made  by  any  man  or  body  of  men  ;  and  so  it,  of 
all  claims,  ought  to  have  the  most  indubitable 
historical  basis.  But  an  indubitable  historical  basis 
is  precisely  the  thing  it  wants.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  authentic  contemporary  literature  the  evi- 
dence is  altogether  against  both  the  primacy  and 
Roman  episcopacy  of  Peter.  The  question  is  capable 
of  being  argued  only  when  tradition  is  introduced. 
And  the  tradition,  though  ancient,  is  neither  apostolic 
nor  primitive — can,  indeed,  hardly  be  placed  earlier 
than  a  century  after  the  event,  though  it  soon 
becomes  uniform  and  general.  The  case  is  arguable, 
but  it  is  no  more.  The  tradition  may  be  true,  but  it 
must  remain  doubtful,  the  reasons  that  justify  the 
doubt  proving  the  absolute  unimportance  of  Peter 
and  his  Roman  bishopric  to  New  Testament  Reli- 
gion. Doubtful  history  is  a  rather  insecure  founda- 
tion for  the  most  awful  and  august  of  sovereignties. 

2.  This  point  has  been  selected  not  for  critical  dis- 
cussion, but  simply  the  better  to  illustrate  the  fact 
that  the  Catholic  system  does  not  lie  within  the  field 
of  apostolic  Christianity.  Its  rise  belongs  to  the 
period  when  the  organism  was  living  within  its 
environment,  and  struggling  for  existence  against  the 
imperial  system  by  following  the  lines  of  the  imperial 
organization.     Its  history  cannot  here  be  written, 


i  So 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


though  the  materials  for  it  exist — it  being  possible  to 
make  every  step  in  the  process  lie  open  to  the  clear 
light  of  day.  Within  the  Christian  societies  various 
ideals  of  polity  lived,  Jewish,  Greek,  Roman  ;  ideals 
derived  from  the  synagogue,  the  free  city,  and  the 
school ;  the  voluntary,  the  industrial,  or  the  benevolent 
association  ;  and  these  were  by-and-by  joined  by 
ideals  that  came  of  Hebrew,  Egyptian,  and  Syrian 
asceticism,  touched  and  modified  by  influences  from 
the  further  East.  The  Church  was  confronted  and 
resisted  by  an  immense  organized  power ;  what 
unified  and  directed  its  energies  contributed  to  its 
success  in  the  struggle.  What  conflict  made  neces- 
sary, made  conflict  easier  and  victory  more  possible, 
if  not  more  sure.  Each  congregation  had  its  presid- 
ing officer,  who  soon  came  to  represent  its  unity  and 
embody  its  authority  ;  then  to  act  for  it ;  then  to  act 
along  with  the  kindred  officers  of  his  province  or  dis- 
trict ;  then  along  with  them  to  form  an  order  or  body  ; 
and,  finally,  the  corporate  unity,  which  the  internal 
growth  had  made  possible,  was  achieved  by  the  action 
and  influence  of  the  State,  the  civil  unity  being  the 
condition  procreative  both  of  the  ideal  and  the  reality 
of  the  ecclesiastical.  The  more  the  official  order 
became  separate  from  the  non-official,  the  more 
sacerdotal  it  grew  in  character ;  the  growth  of  the 
clerical  idea  within  the  Church  prepared  the  way  for 
the  entrance  of  the  priestly,  and  the  coalescence  or 
fusion  of  the  two  ideas  worked  a  revolution  both  in 
the  Church  and  the  Religion.    The  clergy  became 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  iSl 


the  Church  ;  the  Church  the  Religion  ;  and  the  Re- 
ligion a  transformed  Roman  empire — with  the  Pope 
for  emperor,  bishops  for  procurators,  and  the  priest- 
hood for  the  magistrates  and  legionaries  that  levied 
the  taxes,  enforced  the  laws,  upheld  the  unity,  and 
maintained  the  peace  of  the  civilized  world. 

3.  How  it  could  have  happened,  why,  indeed,  it 
could  not  but  happen,  that  the  Roman  State  should 
so  organize  the  Roman  church  as  to  change  its  Cnssar 
Augustus  into  the  Holy  Father,  is  a  question  of  large 
import,  though  capable  of  a  reasonable  and  accurate 
solution.  The  Emperor  was  Pontifex  Maximus, 
head  of  the  pagan  church  as  well  as  of  the  pagan 
State.  The  two  were  identical ;  the  imperial  will  was 
as  supreme  in  religious  as  in  civil  affairs.  If  the 
Emperor  decreed  that  he  was  divine,  and  that  his 
statue  must  receive  the  honour  due  to  a  God,  a  man 
could  disobey  or  defy  it  with  impunity  as  little  as  he 
could  commit  any  civil  crime.  It  was,  indeed,  a 
serious  form  of  high  treason  ;  and  this  was  the 
justification  of  the  successive  persecutions.  It  was  an 
anomaly,  quite  unintelligible  to  the  ancient  pagan 
mind,  that  a  man,  a  citizen  of  a  State,  should  refuse 
to  do  honour  to  the  State's  gods  in  accordance  with 
the  State's  laws  or  the  will  of  its  head.  But  this  pre- 
cisely was  what  the  Christian  refused  to  do  ;  and 
by  his  refusal  he  shocked  the  rulers  and  judges  of 
the  ancient  world,  provoking  them  to  those  penal 
measures  we  call  martyrdoms,  but  the  Roman  called 
vindications  of  authority.   The  system  was  thus  rooted 


182 


CATHOLICISM 


in  immemorial  custom  and  law  ;  but  when  the  Emperor 
was  converted,  a  new  order  of  things  came  to  be. 
The  change  that  happened  to  the  man  affected  the 
office.  He  and  his  world  assumed,  though  there 
were  noble  and  notable  exceptions,  that  the  imperial 
power  and  functions  shared  in  the  conversion  of 
the  imperial  person  ;  i.e.  he  became  in  the  Christian 
Church  what  he  had  been  in  the  Roman  State,  a 
spiritual  as  well  as  civil  head.  He  could  in  the 
new  as  in  the  old  act  as  Pontifex  Maximus,  call  a 
council,  open  it,  intervene  in  its  affairs,  promulgate 
and  enforce  its  decrees,  reward  the  obedient,  punish 
the  disobedient.  Hence  the  man  who  disagreed  with 
the  Emperor  was  persecuted  as  much  after  the  con- 
version of  Constantine  as  he  was  before  it.  Patri- 
archs like  Athanasius  were  banished  or  recalled, 
deposed  or  re-instated,  according  to  the  good 
pleasure  of  the  court.  Bishops  became  courtiers  ; 
intrigued  for  friends  or  against  foes  ;  and  words  such 
as  Tertullian  had  applied  to  the  severities  of  a  pagan 
Emperor,  were  now  with  more  reason  applied  to  those 
of  emperors  who  professed  to  be  Christian.  In  the 
East  the  system  existed  in  fullest  force  ;  but  in  the 
West  the  imperial  was  first  qualified,  then  balanced, 
and  finally  eclipsed  by  the  ecclesiastical  power.  In  the 
East  the  papal  was  no  match  for  the  civil  authority  ; 
in  the  West  the  civil  ceased  to  be  a  match  for  the 
papal.  The  more  the  papal  jurisdiction  was  limited 
in  the  East,  the  higher  grew  the  spiritual  claims  of 
the  Emperor  ;  the  more  the  Emperor  forsook  the 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM     1 83 


West,  the  more  imperial  became  the  Episcopal  Chair 
of  Rome.  And  so  there  was  a  mutual  transference 
of  functions  :  the  ecclesiastical  was  imperialized,  the 
imperial  was  ecclesiasticized.  The  Pope  represents 
an  older  and  more  august  authority  than  the 
apostolic  ;  he  is  the  heir  of  the  men  who,  from  the 
Eternal  City,  governed  the  civilized  world.  The 
deity  which  was  ascribed  to  them  has,  changed  in 
form  but  unchanged  in  essence,  descended  to  him. 
The  apotheosis  their  State  experienced,  his  has 
also  undergone.  For  papal  infallibility  is  but 
imperial  supremacy  transfigured  and  spiritualized. 
Sovereignty  is  infallibility  in  the  region  of  law  ; 
infallibility  is  sovereignty  in  the  region  of  opinion. 
The  king,  who  is  the  source  of  law,  can  do  no 
wrong ;  the  Pope,  who  defines,  sanctions,  and  pro- 
claims dogma,  can  commit  no  error.  Infallibility  is 
thus  the  interpretation,  in  the  terms  of  forensic 
jurisprudence  or  civil  monarchy,  of  a  spiritual  head- 
ship, or  supremacy  in  the  realm  of  belief  as  distin- 
guished from  conduct.  It  came  to  the  Pope  as  the 
successor  of  Caesar.  The  Catholic  church  thus  could 
not  have  been  without  Christianity,  but  still  less  could 
it  have  been  without  Roman  imperialism.  It  owes 
its  life  to  the  one,  but  its  distinctive  organization  it 
owes  to  the  other.  The  very  forces  that  disorganized 
the  civil  body  helped  to  organize  the  ecclesiastical. 
Apart  from  Rome,  and  Rome  decadent — with  the 
imperial  ideal  and  organism,  but  without  the  imperial 
spirit — Catholicism  could  never  have  come  to  be.  If 


CATHOLICISM 


the  Latin  church  had  passed  the  first  five  centuries  of 
its  existence  under  an  Oriental  despotism  or  amid  free 
Greek  cities,  its  structure  would  have  been  altogether 
different.  It  seemed  to  vanquish  the  empire,  but  the 
empire,  by  assimilating  it,  survived  in  it.  The  name 
that  distinguished  the  dynasty  was  the  name  of 
Christ  :  but  the  form  under  which  its  power  or 
monarchy  was  constituted  was  the  form  of  Caesar. 

§  VI.  The  Ideas  which  Organized  the  System 

I.  So  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  the  condi- 
tions and  process  of  outer  organization  ;  but  there  is 
a  deeper  and  more  vital  question — What  were  the 
organizing  ideas ?  and  whence  came  the)-?  Catholi- 
cism is  not  a  mere  aggregation  of  atoms,  but  the 
articulation  of  an  idea,  the  embodiment  of  a  trans- 
cendental ideal.  What  is  termed  its  supernaturalism 
is  but  this  ideal  translated  into  dogma,  and  then 
worked  into  a  reasoned  system.  Its  natural  history 
is  too  vast  a  subject  to  be  here  analytically  handled, 
or  even  touched,  especially  as  it  would  involve  the 
discussion  of  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  ancient 
thought.  The  organic  doctrines  of  Christianity  and 
the  organizing  ideas  of  Catholicism  are  different  and 
distinct.  The  former  proceed  by  a  synthetic  process 
from  the  Religion  of  Christ,  and  can  be  analytically 
resolved  into  it ;  but  the  latter  are  of  foreign,  though 
not  necessarily  of  alien,  origin,  taken  up  into  the  body 
of  doctrine  and  becoming  there  factors  of  develop- 
ment and  variation.     Christianity  found  the  world 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM     1 85 


expectant;  the  thought  it  was  to  change  began  by 
changing  it.  The  philosophy  it  was  able  to  overcome 
as  an  enemy  it  could  not  so  easily  resist  as  a  friend. 
To  forsake  an  error  is  not  to  be  purged  from  it  ; 
though  Augustine  renounced  Manicheism,  yet  his 
early  dualism  subtly  penetrates  all  his  later  thought. 
And  so  the  heresy  that  forced  the  church  to  formu- 
late its  doctrine  did  not  leave  it  with  the  old  purity  of 
faith  or  simplicity  of  polity.  Gnosticism  was  van- 
quished, but  not  annihilated  ;  its  antithesis  of  matter 
and  spirit,  found  a  footing  in  the  new  society  and 
modified  its  ideal  of  life,  making  it  less  surely  con- 
scious of  the  unity  of  the  secular  and  eternal. 
Ebionitism  was  defeated,  but  the  mind  that  cultivated 
poverty  for  the  increase  of  Religion  lived  on,  and 
even  gained  an  ampler  and  freer  field  for  its  exercise. 
Jewish  asceticism,  Syrian  and  Egyptian,  did  not  long 
survive  the  Jewish  state  ;  but  it  did  not  die  till  its 
ideas  and  example  had  touched  and  affected  the 
church.  Yet  these  were  but  incidental  influences ; 
the  most  plastic  came  from  the  revived  philosophies, 
the  Stoic,  Pythagorean,  and  Platonic.  Similar  ques- 
tions were  debated  in  the  academies  and  the  cateche- 
tical schools,  and  their  ideas  and  disciplines  were  also 
akin.  Alexandrian  philosophy,  as  much  as  Alexan- 
drian theology,  had  its  doctrine  of  God,  of  the 
Trinity,  faith,  spiritual  or  allegorical  interpretation, 
bodily  mortification,  supernatural  enlightenment,  and 
final  reward  ;  and  if  the  rivals  did  not  copy,  they  at 
least  stimulated  and  developed  each  other.     It  is 


i86 


CATHOLICISM 


significant  that  the  earlier  influence  was  metaphysical 
and  theological,  but  the  later  ecclesiastical  and 
mystic,  or  political  and  sacramentarian.  In  the  third 
and  fourth  centuries  the  great  questions  were  those 
touching  the  Godhead  ;  how  God  was  to  be  conceived  ; 
how  lie  was  related  to  the  world  ;  how  to  man,  Chris- 
tian and  heathen ;  what  Father  and  Son  signified,  and 
what  Word  and  Spirit ;  how  the  One  could  be  the 
manifold,  and  because  the  manifold,  be,  while  the 
One,  the  All-loving  and  the  All-efficient,  the  home  of 
all  perfection  and  the  centre  of  all  energy.  But  in 
the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  the  great  questions  were 
those  touching  the  Church,  its  idea,  orders,  people 
discipline,  sacraments,  the  mystic  allegories  of  nature 
and  grace.  This  change  meant  many  tilings,  but 
mainly  this  : — Ecclesiastical  organization  had  pro- 
ceeded so  far,  that  it  was  necessary  to  find  for  it  a 
speculative  basis  and  unifying  ideal.  With  every 
change,  indeed,  in  the  organism,  there  had  been  a 
correlative  change  in  the  collective  consciousness  ; 
the  development  of  new  organs  and  energies  had 
developed  new  ideas  and  activities  ;  but  what  was 
now  needed  was  a  conception  that  should  unite  all 
the  parts  into  an  harmonious  and  homogeneous 
system.  And  to  this  result  Neo-Platonic  thought 
powerfully  contributed.  Augustine  came  to  Paul 
from  the  study  of  Plato,  and  he  more  than  any  man 
Platonized  the  Paul  he  studied  and  the  ideal  of  the 
Church  he  depicted  and  maintained.  Synesius  had 
been  a  Christian  while  a  Platonist,  and  remained  a 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  187 


Platonist  after  he  had  become  a  Christian.  The 
Pseudo-Dionysius  represents  the  Neo-Platonic  prin- 
ciples and  interpretative  method  applied  to  the 
Catholic  system  :  "  symbolism  reigns  in  heaven  and 
on  earth,  a  celestial  hierarchy  holds  the  approaches  to 
God  above,  an  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  guards  and 
regulates  them  below ;  and  men  are  graduated 
according  to  the  degree  of  their  initiation  in  the  holy 
mysteries  which  at  once  reveal  and  conceal  the  in- 
effable Godhead.  No  book  exercised  a  mightier 
influence  on  Catholicism,  did  more  on  the  one  hand 
to  foster  its  mysticism,  on  the  other  to  develop 
its  sacerdotalism.  It  moulded  in  an  equal  degree 
men  so  dissimilar  as  Scotus  Erigena  and  Thomas 
Aquinas,  Hugo  of  St.  Victor  and  Albertus  Mag- 
nus, Grosseteste  and  Dante ;  and  yet  it  was  but 
Neo-Platonism  made  to  speak  with  the  Catholic 
tongue."  1 

2.  It  is  therefore  due  to  no  mere  accident  or 
curious  coincidence  that  so  many  affinities  exist 
between  Plato's  Republic  and  the  Roman  Church. 
They  differ,  indeed,  in  many  respects  fundamentally  ; 
the  one  is  philosophical  and  an  ideal,  the  other  is 
religious  and  a  reality  ;  but  the  kinship  is  manifest 
enough,  especially  if  the  Republic  be  studied  in  the 
Neo-Platonic  spirit  and  method.  Each  reposes  on  a 
transcendentalism  that  makes  the  actual  exist  through 
and  for  the  ideal ;  yet  so  in  opposition  to  it,  that  a 
special  order  is  needed  to  secure  its  realization.  Each 


1  The  Place  of  Christ,  etc.,  p.  109. 


CATHOLICISM 


is  an  institution  founded  for  the  creation  of  virtue  or 
obedience  ;  and  has  as  its  function  and  end  the  making 
of  this  life  the  way  to  a  better,  or  the  discipline  of  its 
citizens  for  a  higher  and  more  perfect  state  of  being. 
Each  is  possessed  with  the  same  sense  of  the  august 
sanctity  of  the  whole  ;  the  individual  is  nothing  apart 
from  it,  has  no  good  save  in  and  through  and  from  it ; 
he  is  altogether  its,  and  is  to  have  his  whole  life 
regulated  by  its  laws  and  for  its  ends.  Each  has  the 
same  need  for  a  sacred  or  special  order :  in  the 
Republic  the  philosopher  is  king,  for  he  alone  knows 
the  idea,  or  stands  in  the  secret  of  God,  and  so  is 
alone  able  so  to  organize  and  administer  the  laws  as 
to  secure  its  realization  ;  and  in  the  Church  the  priest 
reigns,  the  man  Divinely  appointed  to  speak  to  men 
concerning  God,  and  reconcile  them  to  Him.  In 
each  the  idealism  is  the  basis  of  a  despotism  :  the 
authority  of  the  sacred  order  is  absolute,  the  multi- 
tude may  not  rebel  against  the  custodians  of  the 
truth  ;  they  must  remain  supreme  and  infallible  if  the 
ideal  is  to  be  realized.  Each  has  a  similar  attitude  to 
the  home  and  family  ;  in  the  Republic  the  man  must 
be  without  a  home  that  he  may  the  better  serve  the 
State ;  in  the  Church  the  man  who  would  be  its 
minister  must  be  without  family  or  home.  The  com- 
munity of  goods  in  the  one  has  its  counterpart  in  the 
vows  of  personal  poverty,  in  alliance  with  corporate 
wealth,  in  the  other  ;  in  each  the  individual  derives 
all  his  good  from  the  whole,  and  the  whole  has  com- 
mand over  the  all  of  the  individual.    These  are  but 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM     1 89 


the  rough  outlines  of  a  parallel  which  might  be  indefi- 
nitely extended  and  minutely  illustrated.  But  what  is 
significant  is  this  :  the  differences,  so  far  as  ideal — 
which  of  course  is  not  to  forget  that  the  one  system 
is  speculative,  while  the  other  is  historical — may  be 
described  as,  in  the  main,  those  that  distinguished 
Platonic  from  Neo-Platonic  thought — i.e.,  differences 
due  to  the  penetration  of  the  original  philosophic 
ideal  with  mystic,  hierarchic,  thcurgic,  and  ascetical 
elements.  The  Catholic  church  is  the  Platonic 
kingdom  of  philosophers  transformed  into  a  kingdom 
of  priests. 

The  conclusion,  then,  is  this  : — The  principle  of 
development,  analytically  applied  to  the  catholic 
system,  proves  that  the  parent  form  or  aboriginal 
germ — the  ideal  and  society  of  Jesus — was  by  its 
environments  modified  in  a  twofold  direction.  First, 
from  the  ancient  Religions,  Jewish  and  pagan,  it 
received  the  notion  of  the  priesthood,  with  all  its 
accessories;  and  so  became  sacerdotal.  And,  secondly, 
from  the  Roman  empire,  working  on  the  material  of 
its  primitive  Judaeo-Hellenic  polity,  it  received  the 
dream  and  function  of  Roman  supremacy;  and  so 
became  catholic,  papal,  and  infallible.  Once  it  had 
been  so  modified  and  developed,  it  became,  largely 
through  current  politico-religious  speculation,  pos- 
sessed of  the  organizing  ideas  needed  to  give  it 
intellectual  consistency  and  completeness,  making  an 
historical  system  the  body  of  a  universal  ideal.  But 
this  conclusion  brings  us  to  our  second  main  ques- 


190 


CA  THOLICISM 


tion — the  adequacy  of  the  church  or  institution  to 
the  Religion  and  its  purposes.  Adequacy  may  be 
here  interpreted  in  a  double  sense,  as  either  historical 
efficiency,  or  as  ideal  sufficiency ;  or,  in  other  words, 
as  adequacy  for  work,  or  adequacy  to  the  spirit  and 
matter  of  the  Religion.  Something  must  be  said  as 
regards  each  of  these. 

§  VII.  Catholicism  in  History 

I.  There  is  here  no  desire  to  question  the  efficiency 
and  historical  achievements  of  the  Roman  Church. 
It  is  to  us  no  creation  of  craft  or  subtlety,  human  or 
diabolical,  no  Man  of  Sin,  Scarlet  Woman,  or  shame- 
less Antichrist,  but  a  veritable  creature  of  God  and 
manifest  minister  of  His  providence.  The  energies 
evolved  in  the  struggle  for  existence  enabled  it  at 
once  to  survive  and  be  victorious.  They  were  con- 
ditions of  service,  and  as  such  necessary.  Thus  the 
rise  of  the  sacerdotal  idea  may  be  conceived  as,  on 
the  one  hand,  a  process  of  interpenetration,  and,  on 
the  other,  mediation  and  reconcilement.  It  is  the  one 
because  the  other  ;  the  old  and  the  new  faiths  inter- 
penetrate that  the  new  Religion  may  the  better  win 
and  master  the  ancient  mind.  Catholicism  is  the 
interpretation  of  the  Christian  idea  in  the  terms  and 
through  the  associations  of  the  ancient  faiths,  and  as 
such  represents  on  the  largest  scale  the  continuity  of 
Religion  in  history.  Its  work  was  a  needed  work,  for 
man  is  incapable  of  transitions  at  once  sudden  and 
absolute  ;  the  construction  of  Christianity  through  the 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    19 1 


media  of  the  older  Religions  was  a  necessary  prelude 
to  its  construction  by  a  spirit  and  through  a  con- 
sciousness of  its  own  creation.  The  absolute  ideal 
had,  in  order  to  be  intelligible,  to  use  constituted  and 
familiar  vehicles  ;  but  only  that  it  might  win  the 
opportunity  of  fashioning  vehicles  worthier  of  its 
nature  and  fitter  for  its  end. 

The  political  element,  again,  especially  as  domi- 
nated and  directed  by  the  great  organizing  ideas, 
had  its  own  special  function  ;  it  mediated  between 
the  ancient  empires  of  force  and  the  new  empires 
of  the  spirit.  The  Pope  stood  when  Caesar  fell ;  and 
became,  in  a  sense  higher  than  Caesar  had  ever 
been — master  of  the  world.  In  those  days  of 
anarchy,  when  the  military,  legislative,  judicial,  fiscal, 
and  municipal  system  of  the  empire  had  completely 
broken  down,  when  the  barbarians  had  seized  its 
provinces  and  wasted  its  cities,  and  were  contending 
with  each  other  at  once  for  plunder  and  supremacy, 
the  ecclesiastical  was  the  only  universal  sovereignty 
possible.  And  the  sovereignty  the  Roman  church 
was  called  to  exercise,  it  exercised,  on  the  whole, 
beneficently  ;  it  worked  for  order,  justice,  and  civiliza- 
tion. Its  association  with  the  empire  had  made  it 
imperial ;  its  religious  ideal  made  it  at  once  author- 
itative and  humane.  While  it  owed  its  ambition  for 
supremacy  to  Caesar,  it  owed  its  enthusiasm  for 
humanity  to  Christ.  And  so,  while  it  succeeded,  it  did 
not  repeat  the  empire ;  its  sovereignty  had  another 
basis,  and  was  exercised  by  other  means  for  other  ends. 


IQ2 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


The  church  was,  in  a  sense  Rome  could  never  be, 
"  the  Eternal  City  "  ;  in  it  eternity  took  bodily  shape 
before  the  eyes  of  men  ;  and  so  a  vaster  meaning 
came  into  life,  ennobling  the  men  that  lived  it, 
dignifying  all  its  affairs.  Men  were  not  to  it  divided 
into  a  multitude  of  alien  races ;  all  were  to  it  spirits 
and  immortal,  responsible  to  it,  for  whom  it  was 
responsible  to  God.  It  represented,  therefore,  a 
new  idea  of  sovereignty,  a  grander  and  more  awful 
majesty,  an  empire  that  lived  by  faith  in  the  moral 
and  immortal  worth  of  man,  for  his  good  and  the 
glory  of  God.  To  say  that,  out  of  the  chaos  Rome 
left,  it  created  order,  is  to  say  a  small  and  inadequate 
thing ;  it  created  a  new  ideal  of  government,  made 
man  another  being  to  the  Sovereign  and  the 
Sovereign  another  being  to  man.  Before  it,  had 
been  the  reign  of  might ;  after  and  through  it  was 
to  be  the  reign  of  the  Spirit. 

2.  It  is  impossible,  then,  to  regard  the  history  of 
Catholicism  as  equal  to  the  history  of  Christianity  ; 
it  is  at  once  much  more  and  much  less.  It  is  much 
more :  for  by  many  of  its  ideals,  institutions,  and 
associations  it  represents  the  continuity  of  the  ancient 
and  modern  worlds,  their  kinship  and  community 
in  matters  of  faith  and  worship ;  and  it  is  much 
less,  for  much  of  the  best  work  Christianity  has 
done,  both  in  earlier  and  in  later  times,  has  been 
done  without  it  and  in  spite  of  it.  There  is  nothing 
so  little  historical  as  the  spirit  that  identifies 
Christianity  and  Catholicism,  or  that  sees  in  the  latter 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  193 


either  the  creation  of  Jesus  Christ  or  the  sole  vehicle 
of  His  truth.  It  has  indeed  rendered  eminent 
services  to  our  race  and  our  Religion  ;  these  demand 
and  deserve  our  gratitude.  The  Catholicism  of  the 
Catholic  church  is  large,  but  there  is  one  still 
larger,  the  note  and  possession  of  no  church,  but 
of  all  the  churches — the  Catholicism  of  the  Christian 
Religion.  According  to  it,  the  truth  preserved  by 
any  or  each  is  the  property  of  all ;  the  holiness  or 
beneficence  of  one  is  a  common  heritage,  enriching 
the  whole  family  of  the  faith.  The  saints  of 
Catholicism  are  not  Roman,  but  Christian ;  the 
achievements  of  Protestantism  came  not  of  protest- 
ing, but  of  loyalty  to  conscience  and  to  God.  And 
the  right  attitude  to  both  is  to  say : — Since  they 
are  due  to  the  inspiration  of  the  one  Spirit,  they 
belong  to  the  universalism  of  Christ,  not  to  the 
specialism  of  the  churches.  From  this  point  of 
view  I  claim  to  be  as  much  as  any  Catholic,  heir 
to  all  that  is  Christian  in  Catholicism  ;  and  the 
claim  is  not  in  any  way  affected  by  either  absolute 
negation  or  qualified  assent  from  the  Catholic's  side. 
Whatever  is  of  Christ  in  his  system  can  be  in  no 
respect  alien  to  what  is  of  Christ  in  me  and  mine. 
True  Catholicism  must  be  as  comprehensive  as  the 
action  of  God  ;  whatever  is  less,  but  expresses  the 
particularism  of  man. 

But  if  Catholicism  has  served  our  race  and  our 
Religion,  it  has  also  done  both  eminent  disservice ; 
and  this  alike  by  what  it  has  and  what  it  has  not 

13 


194 


CATHOLICISM 


achieved.  It  has  impoverished  Christian  history, 
has  made  it  less  rich  and  varied  than  it  ought  to 
have  been  in  ideals  of  life,  faith,  and  society.  The 
suppression  of  Montanism  was  not  an  unmixed 
good,  indeed  in  many  respects  not  a  good  at  all ; 
for  in  it  much  that  was  most  characteristic  and 
primitive  in  Christianity  died.  Donatism  had  its 
own  right  to  be  ;  emphasized  elements  in  the  Religion, 
Catholicism  had  no  room  for  or  did  no  justice  to. 
But  a  greater  evil  than  the  monotony  it  introduced 
into  the  Christian  ideal  was  its  failure  to  realize 
its  own.  It  was  potent  in  its  earlier  period,  when 
a  necessity  to  Religion  and  man ;  but  impotent 
in  its  later,  when  man,  having  outgrown  it,  needed 
Religion  presented  in  a  freer  form,  a  nobler  and 
more  congenial  vehicle.  In  the  hands  of  Rome 
Christianity  had  come  so  near  its  death  that  the 
Reformation  was  a  necessity  to  its  life.  The  two 
centuries  before  it  had  been  like  a  desert,  studded, 
indeed,  as  all  who  love  mysticism  thankfully  re- 
member, with  beautiful  oases  of  faith  and  devotion. 
But  the  main  stream  of  tendency  within  the  Catholic 
church  did  not  then  make  for  godliness.  I  do 
not  mean  to  reproach  it  with  men  like  the  Borgias  ; 
all  churches  have  had  their  share  of  bad  men ; 
and  we  have  heard  more  than  enough  of  them, 
though  the  thing  is  most  pitiful  when  wicked  men 
become  officially  infallible.  But  what  I  do  mean 
to  say  is  this  s  Religion  in  the  fifteenth  century  was 
the  creation  of  the  Roman  church,  and  Italy  was 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM     1 95 


then  without  a  Religion,  or,  worse,  had  one  that 
aggravated  rather  than  lessened  the  evil.  The  Italian 
states  were  bad,  the  church  was  no  better ;  the  moral 
depravity  was  encouraged  by  the  intellectual  scep- 
ticism ;  the  sensuous  licence  was  reflected  in  the 
religious.  Extenuating  circumstances  may  be  dis- 
covered ;  the  conflicts  with  the  German  emperors, 
the  French  kings,  and  the  free  cities ;  the  subtle 
influences  of  the  Renaissance,  Moorish  philosophy, 
and  Jewish  learning.  But  these  neither  alter  nor 
explain  the  facts.  Religion  was  the  church's  province, 
in  it  she  had  reigned  for  centuries  without  a  rival ;  yet 
her  infallibility  in  doctrine  had  been  so  mated  with 
inefficiency  in  conduct,  as  to  result  in  the  completest 
breakdown  in  the  matter  of  faith  and  morals  Christian 
Europe  has  ever  known.  The  supernatural  and  the 
natural  gifts  were  so  ill-assorted  that  the  one  did 
more  than  neutralize  the  other  ;  their  joint  action 
made  the  evil  of  the  times  more  inveterate  and  acute. 
The  authority  of  the  church  forbade  the  reform  of  the 
church,  and  the  act  that  broke  her  unity  saved  our 
religion. 

3.  But  it  is  impossible  to  end  here ;  modern  history 
is  as  significant  as  ancient.  Catholics  reproach 
Protestants  with  being  blind  to  the  meaning  of  the 
centuries  that  lie  between  the  first  and  the  sixteenth. 
But  there  is  a  Roman  counterpart  to  this  Protestant 
neglect.  The  centuries  that  have  elapsed  since  the 
fifteenth  ended,  have  been  without  doubt  the  most 
eventful,  fruitful,  momentous  in  the  history  of  man ; 


196 


CATHOLICISM 


and  their  history  has  been  the  history  of  Christian 
peoples.  The  record  of  their  material  progress  has 
been  a  record  of  marvels.  America  has  been  dis- 
covered, colonized,  peopled ;  Asia  has  been  opened 
up,  almost  conquered  and  annexed ;  Africa  has 
been  explored,  and  is  being  pierced  and  penetrated 
on  all  sides ;  and  in  the  Australasian  continent 
and  islands  the  seeds  of  new  States  have  been 
plentifully  sown.  The  European  States,  with  certain 
significant  exceptions,  are  mightier  than  they  were 
four  centuries  ago,  better  ordered,  more  moral,  more 
populous,  freer,  wealthier ;  and  the  poorest  of  the 
countries  have  become  rich  and  full  of  comforts  as 
compared  with  Europe  in  the  days  of  the  Black 
Death.  But  what  part  has  Christianity  had  in  the 
making  of  modern  civilization  ?  Not  much,  if  it 
and  the  Catholic  church  be  identical.  The  conquests 
and  colonizations  effected  by  Catholic  states  have, 
so  far  as  order,  progress,  and  human  well-being  are 
concerned,  been  chapters  of  disaster  and  failure.  The 
progressive  peoples  have  been  the  non-Catholic  ;  from 
them  have  proceeded  the  noblest  of  the  ameliorative 
principles  and  actions  of  the  period.  They  have 
been  the  least  troubled  with  revolution  ;  have  had 
the  most  happy,  well-ordered  commonwealths ;  have 
enjoyed  most  freedom  ;  have  most  successfully 
laboured  to  temper  justice  with  mercy,  to  make 
judgment  remedial,  to  enlarge  the  area  of  rights, 
and  to  raise  the  ideal  of  duty.  And  the  same 
peoples  have  been   pre-eminent  in   the  realms  of 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 97 


thought  and  spirit,  been  most  deeply  and  devoutly 
exercised  by  the  problems  concerning  man  and 
his  destiny.  God  has  not  been  sparing  of  His  gifts 
of  great  men  to  those  who  sit  outside  Catholicism. 
The  Elizabethan  dramatists,  greatest  of  moderns 
in  their  own  order,  were  the  poets  of  the  English 
people  in  the  heroic  moment  of  their  reaction 
against  Rome.  Milton  was  the  poet  of  a  still  more 
radical  revolution.  Cowper  and  Burns,  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge,  Tennyson  and  Browning,  Scott  and 
Carlyle,  represent  the  inspiration  and  aspiration  of 
the  same  people.  Herder  and  Lessing,  Schiller  and 
Goethe,  were  not  products  of  Catholicism.  The 
most  splendid  cycle  of  thinkers  since  the  Platonic 
age  in  Greece,  was  that  which  began  with  Kant  and 
ended  with  Hegel,  sons  of  Protestant  Germany.  It 
is  needless  to  multiply  names.  What  we  wish  to 
know  is  this — the  relation  of  Christianity  to  this 
whole  complex  movement  called  progress  or  modern 
civilization.  Our  modern  world  has  had  more  of 
God  in  it  than  the  mediaeval,  and  He  is  there 
because  of  the  Religion  we  call  Christianity.  But 
were  we  to  identify  the  Religion  with  the  Roman 
church,  we  should  have  to  regard  our  world  as 
in  progressive  apostasy  from  Him.  But  its  apostasy 
means  His  desertion ;  and  a  world  forsaken  of  its 
God  would  be  poorer  in  its  good  than  ours  has 
been  ;  while  a  God  who  could,  even  in  the  interests 
of  an  infallible  church,  forsake  any  part  of  His 
World,  especially  a  part  that  had  been  so  strenuously 


CA  THOLICISM 


feeling  after  Him  that  it  might  know  His  truth 
and  do  His  will,  would  be  less  Divine  than  we 
believe  our  God  to  be.  We  will  not  allow  either 
the  truth  or  the  sufficiency  of  the  religious  idea 
that  would  deny  God  to  any  man,  or  make  Him  the 
special  possession  of  any  church.  For  the  Atheism 
that  denies,  is  less  impious  than  the  Atheism  that 
limits  His  presence,  that  dares  in  its  pride  to  say, 
"  He  is  so  mine  that  you  must  belong  to  me  in 
order  to  belong  to  Him ;  and  what  you  have  of 
Him  is  by  my  grace  and  through  my  act."  That 
vain  Atheism  God  has  in  these  last  centuries  caused 
His  very  providence  to  contradict  and  reprove. 
For  it  were  a  strange  and  satirical  theodicy  that 
should  exhibit  God  as  working  poverty  and  revolu-' 
tion  in  the  nations  that  had  accepted  or  been 
forced  to  accept  the  authority  of  His  own  infallible 
church ;  while  sending  fulness  of  life,  and  grace, 
and  freedom  into  those  that  had  deserted  and  dis- 
owned it. 

§  VIII.  Catholicism  no  Sufficient  Organ  for  the 
Christian  Religion 

This  brings  us  to  the  ideal  sufficiency  of  Catholi- 
cism :  the  question  whether  it  be  a  vehicle  equal  to 
the  spirit  and  matter  of  the  Christian  Religion,  the 
alone  fully  qualified  interpreter  of  its  truth  to  our 
age.  This  is  the  really  fundamental  question,  and 
has  been  so  implied  in  every  issue  raised,  that  in 
what  still  remains  to  be  said  we  must  be  severely  brief. 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM    1 99 


r.  Catholicism  claims  to  present  the  completest 
faith  in  God,  and  to  do  the  amplest  justice  to  the 
mysteries  of  faith  and  the  realities  of  Religion. 
The  supernaturalism  on  which  it  is  grounded  is 
indeed  marvellous,  but  it  is  not  mysterious.  Cardinal 
Newman,  using  the  mysteries  of  nature  to  justify 
those  of  the  Church,  says,1  "  If  I  must  submit  my 
reason  to  mysteries,  it  does  not  much  matter  whether 
it  is  a  mystery  more  or  a  mystery  less."  But  it  may 
matter  in  an  infinite  degree ;  whether  it  does  matter 
depends  on  the  source  and  character  of  the  mysteries. 
The  true  mystery  is  a  thing  of  nature  ;  history  neither 
made  it  nor  can  show  how  it  was  made  ;  reason  finds 
it  and  cannot  elude  it,  for  it  is  bound  up  with  the 
being  of  the  reason  and  the  system  that  holds  and 
unfolds  it.  But  a  false  mystery  is  only  a  marvel,  a 
belief  with  a  remarkable  history ;  without  ground  in 
nature  or  reason  in  thought ;  but  bound  up  with  the 
being  of  an  institution,  explicable  through  it,  yet 
helping  to  explain  it.  The  mystery  is  at  once  im- 
manent and  universal ;  has  its  roots  in  the  universe 
that  confronts  man,  its  reason  in  the  man  that  con- 
fronts the  universe ;  and  through  it  life  is  invested 
with  all  its  meaning  and  all  its  grandeur.  But  the 
marvel  is  occasional  and  particular,  has  no  meaning 
apart  from  the  institution  through  and  for  which  it 
exists,  while  the  institution  has  no  majesty  apart 
from  it.     The  mystery  exercises  reason,  but  the 


1  Sermons  to  Mixed  Congregations,  p.  275. 


200 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


marvel  taxes  faith ;  and  so,  while  authority  may  be 
based  on  the  mysteries  of  reason,  the  marvels  of 
faith  must  be  based  on  authority.  The  supernatural- 
ism  native  to  the  Christian  Religion  is  mysterious, 
for  in  it  nature  and  man  may  lie  embosomed,  com- 
prehended, uncomprehending  ;  but  the  supernatural- 
ism  of  Rome  is  without  mystery,  for  while  it  is 
sufficient  to  the  needs  of  Catholicism,  it  is  inadequate 
to  the  idea  of  God,  or  the  ideals  of  His  providence 
and  kingdom.  It  has,  too,  a  natural  history  of  its 
own  ;  its  most  transcendent  dogmas  need  but  to  be 
studied  through  their  history  to  be  thoroughly  in- 
telligible. Belief  in  them  may  be  the  measure  of 
submission  to  the  authority  on  which  they  rest ;  but 
it  in  "no  way  indicates  the  attitude  of  the  mind  to 
those  ultimate  beliefs  which  are  the  true  mysteries  of 
thought  and  the  universe.  Nay,  a  man's  faith  in  the 
supernatural  may  be  all  the  less  real  that  his  faith  in 
Catholic  dogma  is  strong ;  it  may  be  faith  in  the 
church  and  its  determinations,  not  in  God  and  His 
living  Spirit.  If  God  is  known  and  approached 
through  the  church,  then  it  is  not  so  much  God  as 
the  church  that  is  believed  ;  for  its  people  can  know 
Him  only  through  the  terms  it  approves,  and  ap- 
proach Him  only  on  the  conditions  it  prescribes. 
But  to  bind  God  to  a  church,  and  distribute  and 
determine  His  truth  through  its  decrees,  is  a  bad 
supernaturalism  ;  it  is  to  bring  the  Almighty  within 
the  limits  of  an  historical  institution,  and  then  to 
argue  that  the  limitation  is  credible  because  it  makes 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  201 


the  institution  so  divine,  justifies  its  claims,  and 
explains  its  prerogatives.  This,  I  repeat,  may  be 
marvellous,  but  it  is  not  mysterious ;  it  may  make 
the  institution  remarkable,  but  it  does  not  make 
Religion  divine.  The  more  organized  authority 
becomes,  the  more  exigent,  imperative,  imperious,  it 
grows ;  in  a  word,  the  more  it  is  incorporated  in  a 
church,  the  more  the  church  tends  to  supersede  God, 
and  to  become  His  substitute.  The  centre  of  gravity 
is,  as  it  were,  changed ;  the  church  experiences  a 
kind  of  apotheosis,  God  suffers  a  sort  of  political 
incarnation.  It  so  holds  the  approaches  to  Him 
that  it  is  not  so  much  in  His  hands  as  He  is  in  its ; 
and  in  the  very  degree  that  it  possesses  Him,  nature 
and  man  are  deprived  of  His  presence.  The  special 
Theism  of  the  church  ends  in  a  more  awful  Atheism 
of  the  universe. 

2.  Indeed,  the  radical  defect  of  Catholicism  seems 
to  me  its  want  of  a  true  supernaturalism,  and  even 
fundamental  incompatibility  with  one.  It  is  through- 
out conceived  in  the  interests  of  the  church  rather 
than  in  the  interests  of  Religion  and  humanity. 
The  Catholic  church  is  built  on  a  conception  of 
Deity  that  is  not  Christ's;  it  dispenses  His  grace  and 
distributes  His  truth  to  those  outside  its  pale  on 
terms,  in  modes  and  quantities,  that  involve  the 
negation  of  His  holiest  attributes  and  divinest 
qualities — the  scholastic  distinctions  which  most 
incline  to  charity  being  but  an  aggravation  of  the 
offence.    And  even  to  those  within  its  pale  the 


202 


CATHOLICISM 


representation  of  Him  is  imperfect :  the  church  has 
determined  the  idea  of  God  ;  the  idea  of  God  has 
not  been  allowed  to  determine  the  idea  and  spirit 
of  the  church.  There  is  no  Religion  so  generous  as 
the  Religion  of  the  New  Testament.  God  as  He 
appears  there  is  the  universal  Father,  and  all  men 
are  His  sons  ;  between  Him  and  them  no  institution 
or  church  can  be  allowed  to  stand,  the  only  Priest 
or  Mediator  being  the  Christ.  The  Apostles  burn 
with  holy  passion  against  every  "  middle  wall  of 
partition,"  or  whatever  would  limit  the  grace  and 
activity  of  God.  He  is  the  God  of  both  Jew  and 
Gentile,  "  in  Him  all  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being,"  "  in  every  nation  he  that  feareth  God  and 
worketh  righteousness  is  accepted  of  Him."  In  the 
early  Church  this  was  the  doctrine  of  men  like  Justin 
Martyr  and  Clement  of  Alexandria  ;  but,  as  the  idea 
of  the  Catholic  church  rose,  the  remoter,  the  more 
formal  and  circumscribed,  were  God's  relations  to  men 
conceived  to  be.  The  greater  the  emphasis  laid  on  the 
priesthood  and  mediation,  with  their  associated  ideas 
and  instruments,  the  less  general  became  His  influ- 
ence and  the  less  immediate  intercourse  with  Him  ; 
and,  as  He  lost,  the  intermediaries  gained  in  reality 
to  faith.  The  very  notion  of  Religion  was  revolu- 
tionized, ceased  to  have  the  spiritual  immediacy,  the 
ethical  breadth  and  intensity,  the  filial  love  and 
peace,  the  human  purity  and  gentleness,  of  Jesus  ;  and 
became  more  akin  to  the  ancient  sacerdotal  and 
ceremonial  worships.     The  great  enemy  of  God  is 


CATHOLICISM  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  203 


the  idea  of  the  church  and  its  priesthood.  Nothing 
has  so  estranged  men  from  Him  as  the  claim  to  be 
alone  able  to  reconcile  Him  and  them.  The  most 
clamant  need  of  our  day  is  to  recover  the  religious 
idea  of  Jesus  :  and  the  only  way  to  recover  it  is  to 
think  of  God  as  He  was  declared  to  be  by  the  only- 
begotten  Son,  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father. 

But  it  may  be  well,  before  this  discussion  ends,  that 
we  recall  its  purpose :  viz.,  to  inquire  concerning,  not 
the  truth  of  rival  churches,  but  the  form  in  which 
the  Christian  Faith  can  best  be  presented  to  our  age. 
Religious  men  are  face  to  face  with  serious  issues, 
and  are  burdened  with  grave  responsibilities.  The 
difficulties  of  belief  are  great,  but  the  consciousness 
of  them  is  greater  ;  they  spring  not  so  much  from 
the  new  knowledge  as  the  changed  estimate  and 
conditions  of  life.  Men  are  so  possessed  and  op- 
pressed by  the  labour  needed  to  win  the  means  of 
living,  that  they  have  not  sufficient  energy  of  mind 
to  weigh  or  to  master  the  deeper  mysteries  of  life, 
and  so  are  prepared  to  allow  either  authority  to 
affirm  their  faith  or  criticism  to  dissolve  it.  In  such 
an  age  Catholicism  may  have  its  place,  and  make  its 
converts ;  and  it  is  no  purpose  of  ours  to  take  it  from 
them  or  them  from  it.  But  if  it  claims  to  be  the  one 
real,  sufficient,  and  relevant  form  of  the  Christian 
Religion,  then  the  truth  must  be  spoken.  Not  in 
and  through  it,  is  Religion  to  be  realized  in  an  age 
of  thought,  in  a  world  of  freedom,  progress,  order, 
and  activity.     Its  doctrine  of  authority  and  the 


204 


CATHOLICISM 


church  is  a  direct  provocation  to  scepticism  ;  its  idea 
of  Religion  is  an  impoverishment  of  the  ideal  that 
came  in  the  Kingdom  of  heaven.  Faith  can  come 
by  its  rights  only  as  it  fulfils  its  duties  to  reason. 
And  the  church  that  alone  has  a  right  to  live,  is  the 
church  that,  by  finding  in  God  the  most  humanity, 
most  fills  humanity  with  God  ;  and  so  works  for  the 
establishment  of  that  Kingdom  which  was  founded 
by  the  Son,  and  is  governed  by  the  Father,  of  man. 
July,  1S85. 


V 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 

[To  so  much  of  the  criticism  in  the  foregoing  essays  as  referred 
to  his  philosophical  scepticism,  Cardinal  Newman  replied  in  a 
paper  entitled,  "  The  Development  of  Religious  Error,"  in  the 
Contemporary  Review,  for  October,  1885.  The  reply  was  so 
characteristic  of  the  writer  and  of  his  art  and  method  in  con- 
troversy that,  had  it  been  open  to  me,  I  should  have  liked  to 
reproduce  it  here  ;  and  also  a  supplement,  privately  printed 
later,  written  in  better  temper  and  in  a  more  reasonable  vein. 
The  rejoinder,  at  least  so  much  of  it  as  concerned  the  Car- 
dinal's substantial  criticism,  appears  in  this  essay.] 

CARDINAL  NEWMAN,  in  his  reply  to  me, 
has  done  two  things — he  has  repudiated  and 
denounced  what  my  criticism  never  affirmed,  and 
he  has  contributed  new  material  illustrative  of  the 
very  thesis  it  maintained.  He  has  represented  me 
as  describing  him  as  "  a  hidden  sceptic," 1  and  as 
"  thinking,  living,  professing,  acting  upon  a  wide- 
stretching,  all-reaching  platform  of  religious  scep- 
ticism." 2  I  never  did  anything  of  the  sort  ;  it 
would  require  an  energy  and  irony  of  invec- 
tive equal  to  the  Cardinal's  own,  to  describe  the 
fatuous  folly  of  the  man  who  would  venture  to  make 
any  such  charge.    What  he  was  charged  with,  and 


1  Contemporary  Review,  October,  1885,  p.  457.    2  Ibid.,  p.  466. 

205 


206 


CA  THOLICISM 


in  terms  so  careful  and  guarded  as  ought  to  have 
excluded  all  possible  misconception,  was  "  metaphysi- 
cal "  or  "  philosophical "  scepticism.  This  did  not 
mean  that  he  was  other  than  sincere  in  word  and 
spirit,  especially  in  all  that  concerned  his  religious 
convictions — his  good  faith  in  all  his  beliefs  is,  and 
ever  has  been,  manifest  to  all  honest  men  ;  but  it 
meant  what  it  said,  that  he  so  conceived  the  intellect 
that  its  natural  attitude  to  religious  truth  was  sceptical 
and  nescient.  Scepticism  in  philosophy  means  a 
system  which  affirms  either,  subjectively,  the  im- 
potence of  the  reason  for  the  discovery  of  the  truth, 
or,  objectively,  the  inaccessibility  of  truth  to  the 
reason ;  and  such  a  scepticism,  while  it  logically 
involves  the  completest  negation  of  knowledge,  has 
before  now  been  made  the  basis  of  a  pseudo-super- 
naturalism,  or  plea  for  an  infallible  authority,  that 
must  reveal  and  authenticate  truth,  if  truth  is  ever  to 
become  or  remain  man's.  This  was  the  scepticism 
with  which  Cardinal  Newman  was  charged,  and  it 
was  held  significant,  not  simply  for  his  personal 
history,  but  also  for  the  movement  so  inseparably 
connected  with  his  name.  And  his  last  paper  is  as 
signal  an  illustration  of  its  presence  and  action  as  is 
to  be  found  in  all  his  writings. 

|  I.  The  Philosophical  Scepticism  of  Cardinal 
Newman 

I.  Dr.  Newman's  reply,  then,  which  relates  to  the 
single  point  of  the  philosophical  scepticism,  is  so 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


207 


without  relevance  to  the  original  criticism,  save  in  the 
way  of  illustration  and  confirmation,  that  it  may  be 
well  to  attempt  to  make  the  real  point  at  issue  clear 
and  explicit.  He  speaks  of  me  as  having  been 
"  misled  by  the  epithets  which  he  had  attached  in 
the  Apologia  to  the  Reason."1  The  epithets  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  matter;  all  turned 
on  the  substantive  or  material  idea.  The  criticism 
was  simply  an  endeavour  to  determine,  on  the  one 
hand,  how  Cardinal  Newman  conceived  the  Reason 
and  the  Conscience  in  themselves  and  in  relation  to 
the  knowledge  of  God  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  how 
these  conceptions  affected  or  regulated  the  movement 
of  his  mind  from  Theism  to  Catholicism.  Stated  in 
another  form,  the  question  is  this :  How  is  knowledge 
of  religious  truth  possible  ?  What  are  the  subjective 
conditions  of  its  genesis  and  continuance?  How 
and  whence  does  man  get  those  principles  which 
are  the  bases  of  all  his  thinking  concerning  religion  ? 
and  in  what  relations  do  they  and  the  Reason,  at 
first,  and  throughout  their  respective  historie's,  stand 
to  each  other?  It  is  the  old  problem,  under  its 
highest  and  most  complex  aspect,  as  to  the  grounds 
and  conditions  of  knowledge,  how  it  is  ever  or  any- 
where possible.  The  older  Empiricism  said :  All 
knowledge  is  resolvable  into  sensuous  impressions 
and  the  ideas  which  are  their  faint  image  or  copy. 
There  are  no  ideas  in  the  mind  till  the  senses  have 


1  Contemporary  Review,  p.  46c 


208 


conveyed  them  in ;  it  is  but  a  sheet  of  white  paper 
till  the  outer  universe  has  by  the  finger  of  sense 
written  on  it  those  mysterious  hieroglyphs  which 
constitute  our  intelligible  world.  But  the  critical 
Transcendentalism  replied  :  The  impression  explains 
nothing — must  itself  be  explained  :  how  is  it  that  it 
becomes  rational,  an  intelligible  thing  ?  The  mind 
and  the  sheet  of  white  paper  differ  thus — the  paper 
receives  the  character,  but  the  mind  reads  it  ;  indeed 
the  character  would  have  no  being  save  in  and 
through  the  reading  of  the  mind.  It  is  clear,  there- 
fore, that  we  must  get  before  and  below  the  impres- 
sion to  the  thought,  which  is,  by  its  forms  and 
categories,  the  interpreter  of  the  impression,  the 
condition  of  its  being  intelligible.  Without  a  con- 
stitutive and  interpretative  Reason,  the  world  that 
speaks  to  the  senses  would  be  no  reasonable  world. 

Now,  Cardinal  Newman  may  be  described  as,  by 
virtue  of  his  doctrine  of  the  Reason,  an  empiricist  in 
the  province  of  religious  truth.  It  involves  precisely 
the  same  attitude  to  religion  that  Hume's  philosophy 
involved  to  the  reality  of  the  outer  world,  to  causation 
and  to  personal  identity.  What  Hume  did  by  means 
of  association,  Newman  does  by  means  of  authority. 
The  reason  is,  as  he  is  fond  of  saying,  "a  mere 
instrument,"  unfurnished  by  nature,  without  religious 
contents  or  function,  till  faith  or  conscience  has  con- 
veyed into  it  the  ideas  or  assumptions  which  are  the 
premisses  of  its  processes  ;  and  with  religious  character 
only  as  these  processes  are  conducted  in  obedience 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


209 


to  the  moral  sense  or  other  spiritual  authority.  It  is 
to  him  no  constitutive  or  architectonic  faculty,  with 
religious  truth  so  in  it,  that  it  is  bound  to  seek  and 
to  conceive  religious  truth  without  it ;  but  it  is  as 
regards  Religion  simply  idle  or  vacant  till  it  has 
received  and  accepted  the  deliverances  of  conscience, 
which  stand  to  it  much  as  Hume  conceived  his 
"  impressions "  and  their  corresponding  "  ideas  "  to 
stand  related  to  mind  and  knowledge.  But,  then,  to 
a  reason  so  constituted  and  construed  how  is  religious 
knowledge  possible?  How  can  religion,  as  such, 
have  any  existence,  or  religious  truth  any  reality  ? 
What  works  as  a  mere  instrument  never  handles 
what  it  works  in ;  the  things  remain  outside  it,  and 
have  no  place  or  standing  within  its  being.  And 
hence  my  contention  was,  and  is,  that  to  conceive 
reason  as  Dr.  Newman  does,  is  to  deny  to  it  the 
knowledge  of  God,  and  so  to  save  faith  by  the  help 
of  a  deeper  unbelief. 

I  repeat,  then  :  the  doctrine  of  the  reason  Cardinal 
Newman  stated  in  the  Contemporary  for  October  is 
precisely  the  doctrine  on  which  my  criticism  was 
based  ;  and  it  is  essentially,  in  the  philosophical 
sense,  a  sceptical  doctrine.  But  let  us  see  how  he 
formulates  it.  Here  is  what  may  be  regarded  as  his 
earliest  statement,  with  his  later  notes  appended : — 1 

1  University  Sermons,  p.  55.  The  notes  are  added  :  for  here, 
as  elsewhere  throughout  the  volume,  they  are  significant  by 
their  very  limitations.  They  may  qualify  the  text,  explain  a 
term  or  a  phrase,  protest  against  a  given  inference  or  result ; 


210 


CA  THOLICISM 


"There  is  no  necessary  connexion  between  the  intellectual 
and  moral  principles  of  our  nature 1  ;  on  religious  subjects  we 
may  prove  anything  or  overthrow  anything,  and  can  arrive  at 
truth  but  accidentally,  if  we  merely  investigate  by  what  is 
commonly  called  Reason,2  which  is  in  such  matters  but  the 
instrument!  at  best,  in  the  hands  of  the  legitimate  judge, 
spiritual  discernment." 

Here  is  his  latest  statement,  which  will  be  found  in 
everything  material  identical  with  the  earliest : — 

"  In  its  versatility,  its  illimitable  range,  its  subtlety,  its  power 
of  concentrating  many  ideas  on  one  point,  it  (the  reason)  is  for 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge  all-important  or  rather  necessary  ; 
with  this  drawback,  however,  in  its  ordinary  use,  that  in  every 
exercise  of  it,  it  depends  for  success  upon  the  assumption  ot 
prior  acts  similar  to  that  which  it  has  itself  involved,  and  there- 
fore is  reliable  only  conditionally.  Its  process  is  a  passing 
from  an  antecedent  to  a  consequent,  and  according  as  the  start 
so  is  the  issue.  In  the  province  of  religion,  if  it  be  under  the 
happy  guidance  of  the  moral  sense,  and  with  teachings  which 
are  not  only  assumptions  in  form,  but  certainties,  it  will  arrive 
at  indisputable  truth,  and  then  the  house  is  at  peace  ;  but  if  it 
be  in  the  hands  of  enemies,  who  are  under  the  delusion  that  its 
arbitrary  assumptions  are  self-evident  axioms,  the  reasoning 
will  start  from  false  premisses,  and  the  mind  will  be  in  a  state 
of  melancholy  disorder.  But  in  no  case  need  the  reasoning 
faculty  itself  be  to  blame  or  responsible,  except  if  viewed  as 
identical  with  the  assumptions  of  which  it  is  the  instrument.  I 

but  they  never  either  modify  or  alter  the  radical  doctrine. 
These  notes  are  needed  to  elucidate  the  criticism,  for  nothing 
has  been  more  helpful  to  it  than  a  minute  and  comparative 
study  of  them. 

1  '  That  is,  as  found  in  individuals,  in  the  concrete.' 

2  '  Because  we  may  be  reasoning  from  wrong  principles, 
principles  unsuitable  to  the  subject-matter  reasoned  upon. 
Thus,  the  moral  sense  or  "spiritual  discernment"  must  supply 
us  with  the  assumptions  to  be  used  as  premisses  in  religious 
inquiry.' 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


211 


repeat,  it  is  but  an  instrument ;  as  such  I  have  viewed  it,  and 
no  one  but  Dr.  Fairbairn  would  say  as  he  does — that  the  bad 
employment  of  a  faculty  was  a  '  division,'  a  'contradiction,'  and 
'a  radical  antagonism  of  nature,'  and  'the  death  of  the  natural 
proof  of  a  God."  1 

2.  Now,  I  do  not  wish  to  be  minute  in  my  criti- 
cism, and  argue  that  if  reason,  "  in  every  exercise  of 
it,  depends  for  success  on  the  assumption  of  prior 
acts  similar  to  that  which  it  has  itself  involved,"  then 
the  genesis  and  very  being  of  reason  are  inconceiv- 
able, for  we  are  landed  in  the  notion  of  an  infinite 
series.  As  to  Hume  man  was  a  succession  or  series 
of  "  impressions  and  ideas,"  so  to  Newman  reason, 
as  mere  faculty  of  reasoning,  is  a  series  of  "ante- 
cedents and  consequents " ;  the  difficulty  in  both 
cases  is  the  same,  to  find  how  the  series  began,  and 
how,  having  begun,  it  has  developed  into  what  it  is. 
But  without  resorting  to  minute  analysis,  we  may 
begin  with  the  last  sentence  of  the  above  quotation  ; 
and  concerning  it,  it  is  enough  to  say,  Dr.  Fairbairn 
never  said  any  such  thing,  or,  meaning  what  he  did 
and  does,  could  have  said  it.  His  criticism  referred 
not  to  the  employment  of  the  faculty,  but  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  faculty,  which  determined  its  use ; 
and  this  latest  statement  seems  expressly  designed 
to  elucidate  and  justify  the  criticism.    For  reason,  as 

1  Contemporary  Review,  pp.  459,  460.  A  few  more  instances 
from  the  University  Sermons,  of  Dr.  Newman's  use  of  the  term 
Reason,  may  be  added  to  those  he  has  himself  given  ;  they 
ought  to  be  studied  with  the  Catholic  Notes,  pp.  58,  §  4  ;  60,  61, 
§  7  ;  65,  67,  70,  73,  88,  179,  194,  195,  214,  215. 


212 


CATHOLICISM 


here  described,  is  condemned,  in  all  that  concerns  the 
higher  problems  and  fundamental  verities  of  thought, 
to  incapacity  and  impotence.  It  is  emptied  of  those 
constitutive  and  constructive  qualities  that  make  it  a 
reason  ;  and  by  being  reduced  to  a  mere  ratiocinative 
instrument,  its  very  ability  to  handle  religious  prin- 
ciples, even  in  a  ratiocinative  process,  is  denied.  For 
the  reasoning  process,  to  be  valid,  must  proceed  from 
principles  valid  to  the  reason  ;  but  to  be  so  valid 
they  must  be  more  than  deliverances  or  assumptions 
coming  to  it  ab  extra;  they  must  have  a  root  in  its 
own  nature,  and  be  inseparable  from  the  very  being 
of  thought.  To  use  principles  truly,  one  must  be  able 
to  judge  concerning  their  truth  :  and  how  can  a  reason 
truly  and  justly  act,  even  as  a  mere  instrument  of 
inference,  on  the  basis  of  premisses  it  neither  found, 
nor  framed,  nor  verified,  being  indeed  so  constituted 
as  to  be  unable  to  do  any  one  of  these  things  ? 
Reason,  then,  can  be  ratiocinative  only  as  it  is  con- 
stitutive ;  we  must  have  truth  of  thought,  that  we 
may  know  or  possess  truth  of  being.  The  getting 
of  principles  is  a  more  vital  matter  than  the  reasoning 
concerning  them  ;  and  if  the  constitutive  or  formula- 
tive  and  determinative  factor  be  made  not  only 
distinct  from  the  dialectic  and  deductive,  but  inde- 
pendent of  it,  how  can  they  ever  be  made  to  agree, 
save  by  the  subordination  or  enslavement  of  the  one 
to  the  other?  And  even  then  they  will  not  agree  :  for 
the  principles  cannot  signify  the  same  thing  to  facul- 
ties that  are  not  only  distinct,  but,  as  realized  in  the 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


213 


living  person,  without  "  necessary  connexion."  The 
dictate  of  the  conscience  changes  its  nature  when  it 
becomes  the  axiom  of  the  reason ;  the  "  categorical 
imperative  "  ceases  to  be,  the  moment  it  is  translated 
into  a  speculative  or  intellectual  truth.  It  may — nay, 
it  must — be  true  that  the  man  who  is  deaf  to  the 
voice  of  conscience  cannot  reason  rightly  in  religious 
matters ;  but  it  is  no  less  true  that  the  man  who 
doubts  or  misuses  his  reason  cannot  hear  or  be  en- 
lightened by  his  conscience.  The  only  justification 
of  Cardinal  Newman's  doctrine  would  have  been  the 
reduction  of  conscience  and  reason  to  a  higher  unity  ; 
his  last  condemnation  is  his  distinction  and  division 
of  the  faculties,  for  it  involves  our  nature  in  a  dualism 
which  makes  real  knowledge  of  religious  truth  im- 
possible. There  is  unity  neither  in  the  man  who 
knows  nor  in  the  truth  as  known.  For,  make  a 
present  of  true  premisses  to  a  faculty  merely  ratio- 
cinative,  and  they  will  be  to  it  only  as  algebraic 
symbols,  not  as  truths  of  religion  ;  its  deductive 
process  may  be  correct,  but  it  will  have  no  religious 
character.  But  to  a  reason  without  religious  char- 
acter, unable  to  construe  religious  truths  for  what 
they  really  are,  there  can  be  no  legitimate  reasoning 
concerning  religion ;  truth  is  inaccessible  to  it,  and  it 
is  incompetent  to  the  discovery  and  determination  of 
truth.  This  is  philosophical  scepticism  ;  and  if,  to 
avoid  the  logical  issue,  the  truth  denied  to  the  reason 
is  granted  to  the  conscience,  and  is,  on  its  simple 
authority,  to  be  accepted  as  a  "  magisterial  dictate," 


214 


CATHOLICISM 


then  a  "  division,"  or  "  radical  antagonism  of  nature," 
is  introduced,  which  is  "the  death  of  the  natural 
proof"  for  the  being  of  a  God,  and  of  all  the  primary 
truths  of  religion.  This,  and  no  other,  was  my 
original  criticism  of  Cardinal  Newman  :  and  this, 
confirmed  and  illustrated  by  his  latest  statement,  is 
my  criticism  still. 

§  II,  Correlation  of  the  Subjective  and  Objective 
Scepticism 

I.  Now,  this  very  doctrine  of  the  reason,  with  its 
varied  limitations  and  applications,  is  the  heart  and 
essence  of  the  whole  matter ;  it  is,  in  the  proper 
philosophical  sense,  both  empirical  and  sceptical.  It 
is  a  doctrine  of  impotence ;  the  reason  is  by  its 
very  nature  disqualified  from  ever  attaining  the 
knowledge  of  religious  truth,  as  religious.  It  is  a 
doctrine  of  nescience  ;  for  religious  knowledge  is,  from 
its  very  nature,  unable  to  get  within,  and  be  really 
assimilated  by,  a  reason  which  is  a  mere  inferen- 
tial or  syllogistic  instrument.  Dr.  Newman  is  very 
angry  at  my  speaking  of  his  "  ultimate  ideas,  or  the 
regulative  principles  of  his  thought,"  or  simply  his 
"  underlying  philosophy  "  ;  and  he  declares  that  from 
"  leading  ideas "  and  "  fundamental  principles  "  he 
has  "all  through  his  life  shrunk,  as  sophistical  and 
misleading."  1  Well,  it  may  be  so :  and  if  it  is  so, 
many  things  that  have  been  a  perplexity  to  people 
would  be  explained.    But  it  is  possible  that  if  Dr. 


1  Contemporary  Review,  p.  467. 


REASON  AND  RELIGION  215 


Newman  had  been  described  as  a  person  without 
"  fundamental  "  or  "  regulative  principles,"  he  would 
have  been  angrier  still,  and  with  more  reason.  How- 
ever, the  matter  need  not  be  any  further  disputed  ; 
what  was  meant  by  his  "  underlying  philosophy  "  is 
just  this  doctrine  which  he  has  anew  stated  and 
maintained.  What  was  meant  by  it  as  a  "  regu- 
lative principle  of  his  thought,"  was  that  it  exercised 
over  his  mind,  its  dialectic  and  dialectical  method, 
precisely  the  sort  of  influence  he  has  endeavoured 
to  explain  and  illustrate.  Now,  what  I  ventured  to 
say  before,  I  am  by  the  new  light  the  more  em- 
boldened to  repeat — that  this  fundamental  principle 
determined,  in  a  way  not  written  in  the  Apologia, 
his  whole  inner  history.  He  not  only  doubted  the 
reason,  but  he  mocked  and  scorned  all  who  sought 
to  enlist  it  in  the  service  of  religion.1  It  was  to  him 
no  witness  or  oracle  of  God,  but  simply  a  servant, 

1  See,  for  example,  as  applying  the  principles  of  the  Uni- 
versity Sermons  to  contemporary  mind  and  literature,  the  fol- 
lowing Essays  : — Introduction  of  Rationalistic  Principles  into 
Revealed  Religion  (1835).  This  is  practically  a  review,  hard 
and  unsympathetic,  of  Jacob  Abbott  and  Thomas  Erskine  of 
Linlathen.  Apostolical  Tradition  (1836) ;  MihnaiCs  View  0/ 
Christianity  (1841),  a  review  of  his  "most  dangerous  and  in- 
sidious" History;  Private  Judgment  (1841).  This  latter  is, 
in  particular,  instructive  and  suggestive.  These  are  reprinted 
in  the  Essays  Critical  and  Historical.  Another,  and  even 
more  illustrative  paper,  is  "  The  Tamworth  Reading-room,"  in 
Discussions  and  Arguments,  art.  iv.  This  contains  the  famous 
letters  of  "  Catholicus "  against  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  Lord 
Brougham. 


216 


CATHOLICISM 


whose  duty  was  to  obey,  and  whose  only  virtue  was 
obedience.  Here,  from  the  critical  year  1841,  is  a 
significant  passage,  one  out  of  many,  illustrative  of 
how  little  the  empirical  and  instrumental  reason,  as 
he  conceived  it,  had  of  God,  and  how  little  it  could 
find  Him  in  the  Nature  it  was  called  to  interpret : — 

"  The  whole  framework  of  nature  is  confessedly  a  tissue  of 
antecedents  and  consequents  ;  we  may  refer  all  things  forward 
to  design,  or  backwards  on  a  physical  cause.  Laplace  is  said 
to  have  considered  he  had  a  formula  which  solved  all  the 
motions  of  the  solar  system  ;  shall  we  say  that  those  motions 
came  from  this  formula  or  from  a  Divine  Fiat  ?  Shall  we  have 
recourse  for  our  theory  to  physics  or  to  theology  ?  Shall  we 
assume  Matter  and  its  necessary  properties  to  be  eternal,  or 
Mind  with  its  divine  attributes  ?  Does  the  sun  shine  to  warm 
the  earth,  or  is  the  earth  warmed  because  the  sun  shines  ?  The 
one  hypothesis  will  solve  the  phenomena  as  well  as  the  other. 
Say  not  it  is  but  a  puzzle  in  argument,  and  no  one  ever  felt  it  in 
fact.  So  far  from  it,  I  believe  that  the  study  of  nature,  when 
religious  feeling  is  away,  leads  the  mind,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to 
acquiesce  in  the  atheistical  theory,  as  the  simplest  and  easiest. 
It  is  but  parallel  to  that  tendency  in  anatomical  studies,  which 
no  one  will  deny,  to  solve  all  the  phenomena  of  the  human 
frame  into  material  elements  and  powers,  and  to  dispense  with 
the  soul.  To  those  who  are  conscious  of  matter,  but  not  con- 
scious of  mind,  it  seems  more  rational  to  refer  all  things  to  one 
origin,  such  as  they  know,  than  to  assume  the  existence  of  a 
second  origin,  such  as  they  know  not.  It  is  religion,  then,  which 
suggests  to  science  its  true  conclusions  ;  the  facts  come  from 
knowledge,  but  the  principles  come  of  faith."  1 


1  "The  Tamworth  Reading-room:"  Discussions  and  Argu- 
ments, pp.  299,  300  (4th  ed.).  To  this  remarkable  passage 
Dr.  Newman  has  appended  the  following  note  : — "  This  is  too 
absolute,  if  it  is  to  be  taken  to  mean  that  the  legitimate,  and 
what  may  be  called  the  objective  conclusion  from  the  fact  of 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


217 


In  this  passage,  where  statement  and  argument 
are  alike  logical  results  of  the  implied  philosophy 
of  mind,  the  attitude  of  the  intellectual  sceptic  is 
admirably  stated  ;  either  alternative  is  consonant  to 
reason,  though  the  negative  is  rather  the  more  con- 
sonant. If  reason  stands  alone,  the  conclusion  will 
be  nescience.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  feeling  or  faith  ; 
if  it  be  away,  "  the  study  of  Nature  "  will  lead  to 
acquiescence  "  in  the  atheistical  theory " ;  if  it  be 
present,  the  reference  will  be  to  the  being  of  God. 
Dr.  Newman  elsewhere  quotes  a  doctrine  which 
Hume  "  has  well  propounded,"  though  he  did  it  but 
"  in  irony  "  : — "  Our  most  holy  religion  is  founded 
on  faith,  not  on  reason." 1  The  irony  of  Hume 
is  the  good  faith  of  Newman ;  while  their  creeds 
so  differ,  their  philosophies  so  agree,  that  if  the 
sceptic  had  ever  attempted  an  apology  for  religion, 
he  would  have  made  it  in  the  manner  and  on  the 
lines  and  with  all  the  implicates  and  inferences  of 
the  Catholic. 

2.  Nature,  then,  had  not  simply  to  the  logical  and 
inferential  reason,  but  even,  so  far  as  he  allowed  it, 
to  the  constructive  and  interpretative,  no  necessary 
theistic  meaning.    As  he  himself  says,  "  Take  the 


Nature,  viewed  in  the  concrete,  is  not  in  favour  of  the  Being 
and  Providence  of  God  "  (vide  Essay  on  Assent,  pp.  336,  345, 
369 ;  and  Univ.  Serm.,  p.  194).  But  this,  like  the  other 
Catholic  Notes,  changes  the  doctrine  in  no  material  respect  ; 
it  simply  protests  what  the  author  did  not  wish  to  mean. 
1  University  Sermons,  p.  60. 


218 


CATHOLICISM 


system  of  nature  by  itself,  detached  from  the  axioms 
of  religion,  and  I  am  willing  to  confess — nay,  I  have 
been  expressly  urging — that  it  does  not  force  us  to 
take  it  for  more  than  a  system."  1  Whence,  now,  the 
axioms  of  religion  which  were  needed  to  make  our 
view  of  nature  theistic  ?  As  they  had  no  ground 
in  the  reason,  they  had  to  be  given — i.e.,  received 
on  the  authority  either  of  conscience  or  of  revela- 
tion. If  it  accepted  their  dicta,  it  was  religious;  if 
it  was  without  or  averse  to  them,  it  was  atheistic. 
This  is  the  thesis  of  the  most  remarkable  of  his 
University  Sermons ;  it  comes  out  in  his  account  of 
what  he  calls  the  Divinity  of  Traditionary  Religion, 
which  explains  what  is  true  in  the  various  faiths,  by 
all  men  having  had  "  more  or  less  the  guidance  of 
tradition,  in  addition  to  those  internal  notions  of 
right  and  wrong  which  the  Spirit  has  put  into  the 
heart  of  each  individual." 2  It  appears,  too,  instruc- 
tively in  his  doctrine  of  private  judgment,  whose 
province  he  defines  as  being  to  exercise  itself  upon 
this  simple  question,  "  What  and  where  is  the 
Church  ?  "  We  are  not  to  think  of  gaining  religious 
truth  for  ourselves  by  our  "  private  examination," 
but  ought  only  to  ask,  "  Who  is  God's  prophet,  and 
where  ?  Who  is  to  be  considered  the  voice  of  the 
Holy  Catholic   and   Apostolic  Church  ? " 3    It  ob- 

1  Discussions  and  Arguments,  p.  302.  The  italics  are  his  own. 

2  The  Arians  of  the  Fourth  Century,  pp.  79,  80  (4th  ed.). 

3  Private  Judgment  (1841).  Essays  Critical  and  Historical, 
vol.  ii.,  pp.  3S3-35S  (S*  ed-)- 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


219 


tained  its  perfect  and  logical  expression  in  the  argu- 
ment which  proved  an  infallible  authority  necessary 
alike  to  the  being  of  religion  and  the  church  : — 

"As  the  essence  of  all  religion  is  authority  and  obedience,  so 
the  distinction  between  natural  religion  and  revealed  lies  in 
this,  that  the  one  has  a  subjective  authority  and  the  other 
an  objective.  Revelation  consists  in  the  manifestation  of  the 
Invisible  Divine  Power,  or  in  the  substitution  of  the  voice  of 
a  Lawgiver  for  the  voice  of  conscience.  The  supremacy  of 
conscience  is  the  essence  of  natural  religion  :  the  supremacy 
of  Apostle,  or  Pope,  or  Church,  or  Bishop,  is  the  essence  of 
revealed ;  and  when  such  external  authority  is  taken  away,  the 
mind  falls  back  again  upon  that  inward  guide  which  it  possessed 
even  before  Revelation  was  vouchsafed.  Thus,  what  conscience 
is  in  the  system  of  nature,  such  is  the  voice  of  Scripture,  or  ot 
the  Church,  or  of  the  Holy  See,  as  we  may  determine  it,  in  the 
system  of  Revelation.  It  may  be  objected,  indeed,  that  con- 
science is  not  infallible  ;  it  is  true,  but  still  it  is  ever  to  be 
obeyed.  And  this  is  just  the  prerogative  which  controversialists 
assign  to  the  See  of  St.  Peter  ;  it  is  not  in  all  cases  infallible, 
it  may  err  beyond  its  special  province,  but  it  has  ever  in  all 
cases  a  claim  on  our  obedience."  1 

Now,  these  are  only  the  logical  sequences  in  the 
process  which  compelled  Dr.  Newman  to  hold  Catho- 
licism and  Atheism  the  only  real  alternatives  ;  but 
the  compulsion  came  at  every  point  from  what  he 
must  allow  me  to  call  his  "  underlying  philosophy," 
or  simply,  his  doctrine,  which  made  the  reason  a 
mere  ratiocinative  faculty  or  deductive  instrument, 
by  nature  void  of  God,  and  never  able  to  know 


1  The  Development  of  Doctrine,  pp.  124-125  (2nd  ed.). 


220 


CA  THOLICISM 


.Him  directly  or  for  itself.1  Its  knowledge  of  re- 
ligion being  always  indirect  and  inferential,  "on 
grounds  given,"  the  supreme  difficulty  was  with  "  the 
grounds  "  ;  how  to  get  them,  then  how  to  have  them 
accepted,  ratified,  and  obeyed.  They  were  always 
giving  way  beneath  analysis,  or  being  departed  from, 
or  being  superseded  by  "  false,"  or  "  wrong,"  or  "  secu- 
lar "  premisses,  which  indeed  ever  seemed  to  be  more 
easy  of  acceptance  than  the  religious :  in  short,  his 
principles  of  reasoning  had  no  organic  connection 
with  the  principles  of  knowledge  or  reason.  Reason 
to  him  had  so  little  in  it  of  the  truth,  that  it  was 
as  ready  to  become  the  instrument  of  "  the  false 
prophet "  as  of  the  true  ;  to  speak  for  the  one  was 
as  congenial  to  its  nature  as  to  speak  for  the  other. 
And  so  its  natural  inability  was  the  source  and  basis 
of  its  historical  hostility  to  religion ;  the  more  it 
was  degraded  into  an  instrument,  the  more  it  re- 
venged its  degradation  by  becoming  unstable,  in- 
tractable, inimical.  The  more  critical,  "  aggressive," 
or  "  captious  "  the  reason  became,  the  more  imperious 
had  to  become  the  authority  which  supplied  it  with 
the  "  assumptions  "  or  "  axioms  of  religion  "  ;  and, 
as  was  inevitable,  the  more  imperious  the  authority 
grew,  the  more  "  rebellious  "  grew  the  reason.  The 
result  was  the  one  he  has  so  well  described  in  the 
now  classic  passage  :  "  He  came  to  the  conclusion 

1  "  The  knowledge  of  God  is  the  highest  function  of  our 
nature,  and  as  regards  that  knowledge,  reason  only  holds  the 
place  of  an  instrument."    (Note  in  University  Sermons,  p.  7.) 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


221 


that  there  was  no  medium  in  true  philosophy  be- 
tween Atheism  and  Catholicity." 1  But  it  was  the 
philosophy  that  did  it  all,  and  on  its  truth  depends 
the  validity  of  the  conclusion.  Where  reason  is 
conceived  as  a  mere  instrument,  so  by  nature  with- 
out the  knowledge  of  God  that  all  it  ever  knows 
or  determines  concerning  Him  must  proceed  from 
principles  given  "  on  the  simple  word  of  the  Divine 
Informant,"  named  now  Conscience,  now  Tradition, 
and  now  the  Church,  then  the  alternatives — absolute 
authority  or  absolute  negation — are  inexorable.  Nay, 
more,  this  doctrine,  as  is  so  well  illustrated  by  his 
latest  utterance,  with  its  despair  of  all  secular  forces 
and  its  blind  hope  in  ecclesiastical,  is  doubly  deter- 
minative :  it  yields  the  theory,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
the  Church,  and  on  the  other  of  "  the  False  Prophet," 
or  "  human  society,"  by  whose  action  "  error  spreads 
and  becomes  an  authority."  The  subjective  is  re- 
flected in  an  objective  dualism  ;  the  authoritative 
church  has  its  counterpart  and  contradiction  in  the 
authoritative  world ;  each  succeeds,  as  it  has  its  pre- 
misses or  assumptions  accepted  by  the  reason  as  data 
for  reasoning.  And  thus  the  notion  that  loses  the 
immanence  of  God  from  the  reason,  loses  the  active 
presence  of  God  from  the  collective  history  and 
society  of  man.  The  scepticism  of  the  theory  on  its 
subjective  side  has  its  correlative  in  the  false  super- 
naturalism  of  the  objective  ;  to  dispossess  reason  of 
its  divine  contents  is  to  deprive  man,  in  his  concrete 


1  Apologia^  p.  198. 


222 


CATHOLICISM 


historical  being,  of  the  natural  presence  and  know- 
ledge of  God,  and  to  limit  God's  action  and  activity 
to  means  that  are  all  the  more  mechanical  that  they 
are  conceived  and  described  as  supernatural. 

§  III.  The  Dialectical  Movement  towards  Certitude 

I.  So  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  Newman's 
doctrine  of  the  reason — first  in  its  intrinsic,  and  next 
in  what  may  be  termed  its  biographical  significance  ; 
now  we  must  consider  whether  it  has  any  dialectic 
or  apologetic  worth.  He  has  as  a  matter  of  course 
challenged  my  interpretation  of  the  Grammar  of 
Assent ;  and  another  critic  of  my  criticism  thinks 
it  "  wanting  in  insight,"  and  "  decidedly,  though  not 
intentionally,  unjust,"  due  to  my  not  having  thrown 
myself  "into  the  spirit  of  the  work,"  or  "viewed  it 
from  within."  Now,  it  was  because  the  work  was 
criticised  from  the  most  internal  of  all  standpoints, 
the  biographical,  that  the  criticism  was  what  it  was. 
The-work  cannot  be  understood  alone;  it  were  simply 
unintelligible  to  the  man  who  did  not  know  the  writer 
and  his  history.  It  is,  in  a  far  deeper  sense  than  the 
book  that  bears  the  title,  a  later — as  the  "  Develop- 
ment "  was  an  earlier1 — Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua; 
and  is  as  remarkable  for  what  it  does  not,  as  for  what 
it  does  state  and  attempt.  It  holds  the  place  in 
Newman's  collective  works  that  the  Logic  does  in 
Mill's.  In  the  Logic,  Mill  applies  his  metaphysical 
doctrine  to  the  discovery  and  determination  of  truth  ; 


1  Ante,  p.  158. 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


223 


in  the  Grammar,  Newman  uses  his  philosophical 
doctrine  to  explain  and  vindicate  the  processes  that 
involve  and  justify  religious  belief.  He  explains, 
indeed,  his  object  as  not  "  to  set  forth  the  arguments 
which  issue  in  the  belief"  of  certain  doctrines  ;  "but 
to  investigate  what  it  is  to  believe  in  them,  what  the 
mind  does,  what  it  contemplates,  when  it  makes  an 
act  of  faith."  1  But  he  confesses  that  to  show  what  it 
is  to  believe,  is,  in  a  measure,  to  show  "  why  we  be- 
lieve"; the  one  problem,  indeed,  is  but  the  other  in  its 
most  radical  form.  Now,  the  argument  from  first  to 
last,  and  in  all  its  stages,  reposes  on  Cardinal  New- 
man's distinctive  doctrine  of  the  incompetence  of  the 
reason  ;  its  inability  to  be  more  than  a  formal  instru- 
ment is  the  keynote  of  the  book.  Reason  is  to  him 
individual;  "every  one  who  reasons  is  his  own  centre, 
and  no  expedient  for  attaining  a  common  measure  of 
minds  can  reverse  this  truth."  2  In  discussing  "  first 
principles,"  or  "  the  propositions  with  which  we  start 
in  reasoning  on  any  given  subject-matter,"  he  says  : — 

"Sometimes  our  trust  in  our  powers  of  reasoning  and  memory 
— that  is,  our  implicit  assent  to  their  telling  truly — is  treated  as 
a  first  principle ;  but  we  cannot  properly  be  said  to  have  any 
trust  in  them  as  faculties.  At  most  we  trust  in  particular  acts 
of  memory  and  reasoning.  We  are  sure  there  was  a  yesterday, 
and  that  we  did  this  or  that  in  it  ;  we  are  sure  that  three  times 
six  is  eighteen,  and  that  the  diagonal  of  a  square  is  longer  than 
the  side.  So  far  as  this  we  may  be  said  to  trust  the  mental  act 
by  which  the  object  of  our  assent  is  verified ;  but  in  doing  so 
we  imply  no  recognition  of  a  general  power  or  faculty,  or  of  any 


1  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  99.  3  Ibid.,  p.  345. 


224 


CATHOLICISM 


capability  or  affection  of  our  minds,  over  and  above  the  particu- 
lar act.  We  know,  indeed,  that  we  have  a  faculty  by  which  we 
remember,  as  we  know  we  have  a  faculty  by  which  we  breathe ; 
but  we  gain  this  knowledge  by  abstraction  or  inference  from  its 
particular  acts,  not  by  direct  experience.  Nor  do  we  trust  in 
the  faculty  of  memory  or  reasoning  as  such,  even  after  that  we 
have  inferred  its  existence  ;  for  its  acts  are  often  inaccurate,  nor 
do  we  invariably  assent  to  them." 1 

Now,  it  were  a  curious  point  to  determine  how  trust 
of  a  "  particular  act "  is  possible  without  trust  of  the 
faculty  that  performs  it.  If  we  know  a  given  act  to 
be  true,  we  must  have  a  standard  of  truth ;  it  is 
through  the  truthfulness  of  the  faculty  that  we  know 
the  falsity  or  truth  of  its  "  particular  acts."  But  the 
significance  of  the  passage  does  not  lie  in  its  in- 
consistencies, but  in  its  positive  doctrine.  Reason  is 
but  an  instrument,  a  faculty  of  reasoning,  trustworthy 
in  particular  acts,  not  trustworthy  throughout.  Being 
so  restricted  a  faculty,  we  owe  to  it  little,  not  even 
the  knowledge  "  that  there  are  things  existing  ex- 
ternal to  ourselves."  That  is  due  to  "  an  instinct " 
which  we  have  in  common  with  "  the  brute  creation," 
and  "  the  gift  of  reason  is  not  a  condition  of  its 
existence."  2  As  with  the  belief  in  an  external  world, 
so  with  the  belief  in  God ;  reason  has  nothing  to  do 
with  either.  "  We  begin  to  learn  about  God  from 
conscience."  3  "Now  certainly  the  thought  of  God, 
as  theists  entertain  it,  is  not  gained  by  an  instinctive 
association  of  His  presence  with  any  sensible  pheno- 


1  Grammar  of  Assent,  pp.  6o,  6i. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  6 1,  62.        3  Ibid.,  p.  63. 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


225 


mena ;  but  the  office  which  the  senses  directly  fulfil 
as  regards  creation,  that  devolves  directly  on  certain 
of  our  mental  phenomena  as  regards  the  Creator. 
Those  phenomena  are  found  in  the  sense  of  moral 
obligation."  1 

2.  Here,  then,  on  the  one  hand,  we  have  the  im- 
potent and  instrumental  reason,  which  can  never  get 
to  God,  and  is  to  be  trusted  only  in  "particular  acts" 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  capable  and  authoritative 
conscience,  in  which  God  directly  is,  and  which  is  to 
be  implicitly  obeyed.  And  this  dualism  penetrates 
and  pervades  the  whole  book :  its  argument  may  be 
said  to  be  the  logical  articulation  of  the  doubt  which 
one  faculty  creates  and  another  faculty  corrects.  This 
curious  dualism  is  expressed  in  the  distinctions  be- 
tween "  notional  and  real  apprehension,"  "  notional 
and  real  assent,"  and  between  "  inference  and  assent"  ; 
and  it  underlies  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  "  illative 
sense." 2  That  doctrine  means  that  religion  can  never 
be  handled  on  universal  principles  by  a  reason  that 
may  truly  be  termed  universal ;  but  must  be  left  to 
the  man  so  compacted  of  conscience  and  imagination 
as  to  have  a  sense  for  religion  and  for  the  determina- 
tion of  religious  questions.    If  the  idea  of  the  reason 


1  Grammar  of  Assent,  pp.  103,  104. 

2  It  is  impossible  to  summarize  here,  or  illustrate  in  needed 
detail,  the  significant  positions  in  the  chapters  on  Assent,  Certi- 
tude, Inference,  and  the  Illative  Sense  :  an  opportunity  of  de- 
veloping their  metaphysical  basis,  and  illustrating  its  bearing 
on  the  argument,  may  yet  be  furnished. 

15 


226 


CATHOLICISM 


had  been  larger  and  worthier,  or  if  the  relation  be- 
tween the  reason  and  the  conscience  had  been  more 
organically  conceived,  so  that  the  two  had  appeared 
as  a  unity,  the  whole  argumentative  structure,  and 
the  principles  on  which  it  is  built,  would  have  been 
different.  As  it  is,  religion  never  gets  inside  the 
reason,  nor  the  reason  inside  religion.  They  are  but 
formally  related,  never  really  or  vitally  connected. 
Dr.  Newman  may  have  a  perfect  right  to  limit  the 
province  and  define  the  idea  of  reason  in  his  own 
way ;  but  then,  the  exercise  of  the  right  has  laid  him 
open  to  a  criticism  which  apparently  he  has  not  un- 
derstood, and  which  certainly  he  has  said  nothing  to 
invalidate.  If  the  reason  plays  no  part  in  the  genesis 
of  the  idea  of  God,  it  can  play  no  part  in  its  proof. 
But  this  position  involves  the  converse ;  the  idea  of 
God  and  the  proofs  of  His  being  can  never  be  real 
possessions  of  the  reason.  They  remain  without  it, 
grounds  or  premisses  for  its  dialectical  exercise  ;  they 
do  not  live  within  it,  principles  and  laws  of  its  very 
life.  The  philosophy  that  so  construes  the  reason  as 
to  involve  these  consequences,  is  sceptical ;  and  this 
is  the  philosophy  of  "  The  Grammar  of  Assent." 


§  IV.  Reason  and  Authority  in  Religion 

I.  But  what  significance  has  this  extended  criticism 
of  Cardinal  Newman  ?  I  have  been  warned  not  to 
identify  him  with  the  Catholic  church ;  for  it  cannot 
be  identified  with  "any  individual  genius  however 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


227 


great."  1  I  never  did  nor  ever  meant  so  to  identify 
him.  The  Catholic  church  is  greater  than  any  theo- 
logian, but  a  theologian  may1  also  be  greater  than 
the  Catholic  church.  The  Fathers  do  not  belong  to 
Rome,  but  to  Christendom.  Rome  may  have  been  in 
them,  but  more  than  Rome  was  there  ;  elements  larger 
and  richer  than  she  was  able  to  assimilate.  The 
earlier  Greek  Fathers  had  a  nobler  catholicity  than 
she  has  reached ;  the  men  of  the  heroic  age  of  the 
Greek  church  had  another  and  more  generous  an- 
thropology, a  freer  and  loftier  ecclesiology  than  hers. 
Augustine,  too,  was  greater  than  Catholicism ;  for 
while  its  developments  have  done  the  amplest  justice 
to  his  ecclesiastical  doctrine,  they  have  failed  to  do 


1  Dr.  Barry  in  the  Contemporary  Review,  November,  1885, 
p.  662.  I  have  expressly  wished  to  avoid  making  any  reference 
to  this  paper,  which  was  notably  free  from  innuendo  and  in- 
tentional misstatements.  But  in  some  respects  it  was  open  to 
the  charge  of  inaccuracy.  The  writer  quite  misapprehended 
Kant's  position,  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  argument  which 
was  based  upon  it.  He  also  represented  me  (p.  657)  as  saying : 
— "That  religion  must  be  emancipated  from  the  churches, 
since  these  have,  on  the  whole,  'become  simply  the  most 
irreligious  of  institutions,  mischievous  in  the  very  degree  of 
their  power."1  Now  here  is  the  rather  tame  original  of  this 
rash  and  atrocious  deliverance  :— "  The  churches  are  the 
means,  but  Religion  is  the  end;  and  if  they,  instead  of  being 
well  content  to  be  and  to  be  held  means,  good  in  the  degree  of 
their  fitness  and  efficiency,  regard  and  give  themselves  out  as 
ends,  then  they  become  simply  the  most  irreligious  of  institu- 
tions, mischievous  in  the  very  degree  of  their  power."  (Cf. 
ante,*?.  1.) 


228 


CATHOLICISM 


equal  justice  to  his  theological.  The  official  theology 
of  Rome  has  more  semi-Pelagian  than  Augustinian 
elements ;  the  Augsburg  Confession  expresses  in  its 
doctrine  of  sin  more  truly  and  nearly  the  mind  of 
Augustine,  than  the  Tridentine  Canons ;  and  Calvin 
is  a  better  and  more  faithful  exponent  of  him  than 
either  Bellarmine  or  Petavius.  The  Schoolmen,  too, 
are  in  many  ways  ours  :  they  are,  in  the  widest  sense, 
catholic  divines :  the  exclusive  property  of  no  church, 
but  the  common  possession  of  all.  Nor  would  I 
identify  too  closely  any  modern  official  or  apologetic 
divine  with  Catholicism.  It  has  its  own  history  of 
variations,  as  vast  and  quite  as  conflicting  as  those  of 
Protestantism  ;  and  it  would  be  no  grateful  task  to 
write  it.  The  distinction  between  Rome  and  Cardinal 
Newman  has  been  explicit  all  through  this  criticism  ; 
is  necessary  indeed  to  its  force,  and  was  emphasized 
by  the  contrast  between  the  causes  of  the  Catholic 
revival  in  England  and  on  the  Continent.  But  he 
was  selected  as  the  leader  and  representative  of  that 
revival  in  the  special  form  it  here  assumed  ;  at  once 
its  real  author  and  true  embodiment,  the  man  without 
whom  it  either  would  not  have  been,  or  could  not  have 
been  what  it  was.  If  it  is  to  be  understood  and  criti- 
cally appraised,  it  must  be  through  the  man  that  made 
it.  The  causes  and  influences  that  determined  his 
mind  belong,  as  it  were,  to  its  very  essence — help  us 
to  see  what  meaning  and  worth  it  has  for  the  spirit 
and  thought  of  our  time.  He  has  told  us  by  act 
and  speech,  in  every  variety  of  subtle  argument  and 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


229 


eloquent  phrase,  that  Catholicism  is  the  only  secure 
and  open  haven  for  the  doubt-driven  and  storm-tossed 
soul  ;  that  without  it  the  faith  and  hope  of  the  Chris- 
tian centuries  must  be  engulphed  by  the  rising  tides 
of  negation  and  godlessness.  But  when  we  examine 
the  reasons  for  his  act  and  for  his  peculiar  speech,  or 
the  bases  of  his  argument  and  apologies,  we  find  that 
they  proceed  from  as  deep  a  scepticism  as  the  one  he 
invites  us  to  escape.  He  has  lost  God  out  of  the 
reason  and  the  realm  of  the  reasonable,  and  thinks 
He  is  to  be  got  back  only  as  a  Deus  ex  machina.  To 
build  a  supernatural  faith  on  a  natural  impotence, 
seems  to  us  a  suicidal  proceeding.  We  prefer  to  find 
God  where  he  has  not  found  Him,  and  build  faith  on 
the  sanity  of  a  human  reason  which  is  full  of  God 
and  akin  to  the  divine. 

2.  But  before  passing  from  this  subject  it  may  be 
as  well  to  allude  to  a  question  which  has  been  made 
to  play  a  great  part  in  this  and  similar  discussions, 
viz.,  in  what  relation  does  authority  stand  on  the  one 
hand  to  religion,  and  on  the  other  to  reason  ?  It  was 
soberly  said,  as  if  it  were  a  true  or  a  relevant  thing 
to  say,  that  this  criticism  of  Cardinal  Newman  was  an 
assault  "  upon  authority  itself,  considered  as  the  basis 
of  revealed  religion."  It  is  not  at  all  obvious  how 
even  the  most  mordant  criticism  of  a  theory  which 
made  the  natural  incompetence,  or  aversion  of  the 
intellect  to  the  knowledge  of  God,  the  apology  for  a 
stupendous  miraculous  mechanism  for  keeping  this 
knowledge  alive — should  be  an  assault  upon  either 


230 


CATHOLICISM 


authority  or  revealed  religion.  What  is  obvious  is 
the  exact  opposite :  that  there  is  no  plea  for  authority 
like  that  to  be  found  in  an  intellect  so  sane  and 
rational  and  conscious  of  its  supernatural  qualities 
and  relations  that  it  must  seek  God,  feel  after  if 
haply  it  may  find  Him.  But  then  the  authority  that 
corroborates  and  develops  the  native  godliness  of  the 
mind,  will  be  very  different  from  the  authority  needed 
to  maintain  God  in  the  face  of  the  mind's  native 
godlessness.  Hence  it  seems  to  me  mere  inconse- 
quence and  irrelevance  of  thought  to  argue  in  this 
fashion:  "There  is  no  argument  against  an  infallible 
Church  that  may  not  be  directly  turned  against  a 
visible  Christ."  "  If  a  dogmatic  Church  is  unreason- 
able, a  dogmatic  or  inspired  Christ  is  unnecessary."  1 
In  other  words,  the  argument  is  in  effect  this  :  "  If  you 
admit  the  authority  of  Christ,  you  admit  in  principle 
the  very  thing  you  have  been  arguing  against.  Your 
position,  therefore,  is  illogical,  and  from  it  there  are 
only  two  logical  issues  :  either,  maintain  your  polemic 
against  authority  as  embodied  in  Rome,  and  reduce 
it  to  consistency  and  completeness  by  denying  the 
authority  of  Christ  ;  or,  maintain  the  authority  of 
Christ,  and  follow  the  principle  to  its  legitimate  and 
complete  and  most  august  expression  in  the  Church 
of  Rome." 

But  this  argument  is  vitiated  by  two  initial  assump- 
tions— (a)  that  I  have  been  arguing  against  authority 


1  Contemporary  Review,  Nov.,  1885,  p.  600. 


REASON-  AND  RELIGION 


231 


in  religion.    On  the  contrary,  what  has  been  argued 
against  is  the  paralogism  which  proved  man's  need 
of  authority  by  an  elaborate  demonstration  of  his 
inability  to  see  or  to  use  his  sight.    The  blind  man 
cannot  always  choose  his  guides,  and  so  may  select 
one  even  blinder  than  himself,  with  the  result  that 
both  will  fall  into  the  inevitable  ditch.    My  argument 
has  been  in  behalf  of  vision,  not  against  authority, 
and  a  vision  that  can  trust  all  the  more  completely 
that  it  can  see  while  it  believes.    But  (/3)  the  second 
assumption  is,  that  the  two  authorities — Christ's  and 
Rome's — are  in  nature  and  quality  identical  and 
equivalent.    While  in  both  cases  the  one  word  is 
used,  it  expresses  two  distinct  and  even  opposed 
notions.    There  is  no  sense  in  which  Rome  is  an 
authority  that  Christ  is  one ;  and  no  sense  in  which 
Christ  is  an  authority  that  Rome  is  one.    He  is  an 
authority  in  the  sense  that  conscience  is  ;  it  is  an 
authority  in  the  sense  that  the  law  and  the  legisla- 
ture are  authorities.    His  authority  is  personal,  moral, 
living  ;  its  is  organized,  definitive,  determinative,  ad- 
ministrative.    The  authority  which  springs  from  a 
person,  and  is  exercised  through  conscience,  is  the 
basis  of  freedom  ;  but  the  authority  of  a  judicial 
tribunal  or  determinative  conclave  is  its  limitation  or 
even  abrogation.    The  one  presents  matter  for  in- 
terpretation and  belief;  but  the  other  decides  what  is 
to  be  believed,  and  in  what  sense.    The  attribute  or 
essential  characteristic  of  Christ's  authority  as  exer- 
cised and  accepted,  is  Sovereignty ;  but  the  attribute 


232 


CATHOLICISM 


and  note  of  the  papal  authority  is  Infallibility.  Christ 
is  not  infallible  in  the  papal  sense,  and  the  papal 
authority  is  not  sovereign  in  the  sense  predicated  of 
Christ.  Christ  defines  no  dogma,  formulates  no  ex 
cathedra  judgment  concerning  the  mode  in  which  His 
own  person  and  the  relation  of  the  two  natures  must 
be  conceived,  or  concerning  the  rank  and  conception 
of  His  mother,  or  indeed  on  any  of  those  things  on 
which  Rome  has  most  authoritatively  spoken  ;  while 
the  methods  of  Rome  in  enforcing  her  decrees  are 
those  of  a  legal  or  judicial  or  institutional  sovereignty. 
So  absolute  is  the  difference  and  so  emphatic  the 
contrast  between  the  two  authorities,  that  we  may 
say,  to  allow  the  sovereignty  of  Christ  is  to  dis- 
allow the  infallibility  of  Rome ;  and  to  accept  the 
latter  is  to  exchange  a  moral  supremacy,  which  per- 
mits no  secular  expediencies  or  diplomacies,  for  one 
legal  and  economical,  which  must  be  now  rigid  and 
now  elastic,  as  the  public  interests  or  the  expedi- 
encies of  the  hour  may  demand.  If,  then,  there  is 
to  be  argument  from  the  principle  of  authority,  it 
must  conduct  to  an  entirely  different  conclusion  from 
the  one  offered  by  these  crude  alternatives.  If  we 
accept  authority  as  embodied  in  Rome,  we  cannot 
admit  it  as  personalized  in  Christ ;  if  we  admit  it  as 
personalized  in  Christ,  we  cannot  accept  it  as  em- 
bodied in  Rome.  That  we  admit  His,  is  no  argument 
why  we  should  admit  another ;  but  rather  why  no 
other  should  be  admitted,  especially  as  that  other  is 
entirely  distinct  in  nature,  opposite  in  kind,  and 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


233 


incompatible  in  action.  To  seek  to  supplement 
Christ's  authority  by  the  Church's,  is  to  pass  from 
the  freedom  of  a  moral  sovereignty  to  the  bondage  of 
a  judicial  infallibility.  And  so  the  most  conclusive 
argument  against  an  infallible  church  is  a  sovereign 
Christ. 

There  is  thus  a  twofold  difference  between  what 
we  may  term  spiritual  or  religious  and  ecclesiastical 
or  political  authority  in  the  matter  of  faith  :  (a)  sub- 
jective, expressed  in  the  agreement  or  correspondence 
of  authority  and  thought,  rather  than  in  the  suppres- 
sion or  contradiction  of  thought  by  authority :  and 
(/3)  objective,  the  difference  between  Christ  and  the 
church,  making  them  as  authorities  altogether  differ- 
ent. They  can  be  compared  only  to  be  contrasted, 
and  are  related  as  the  incompatible  and  the  mutually 
exclusive.  And  this  relation  is  due  not  to  the  an- 
tagonism of  rival  or  opposed  authorities  akin  in 
order  or  nature,  but  to  the  radical  difference  or 
essential  incompatibility  in  character  and  kind  of 
the  authorities  themselves.  Authority  as  organized, 
legal,  definitive,  judicially  and  officially  infallible, 
embodied  in  an  episcopate  or  conclave  or  church,  is 
one  thing  ;  and  the  authority,  personal,  moral,  re- 
ligious, which  Jesus  claimed,  is  another  thing  alto- 
gether. And  the  very  arguments  which  proved  the 
former  a  violation  of  God's  own  order,  prove  the 
latter  its  highest  expression  or  manifestation.  I 
cannot  allow,  indeed,  that  authority  in  the  Roman 
sense  of  the  term  is  "  the  basis  of  revealed  religion  "  : 


234 


CATHOLICISM 


but  I  hold,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  basis  of  all  religion 
is  Revelation.  Without  the  presence  and  action  of 
God  in  nature,  through  reason  and  on  man,  I  could 
not  conceive  religion  as  existing  at  all.  That  it 
exists  anywhere  is  to  me  evidence  that  God  has  been 
active  there,  seeking  man,  as  man  has  been  seeking 
Him.  Whatever  truth  is  at  any  place  or  any  mo- 
ment found,  comes  from  God,  and  reveals  the  God 
from  whom  it  comes.  But  all  His  truth  comes 
through  persons,  and  the  degree  and  quality  of  truth 
that  so  comes  is  the  measure  of  the  persons'  au- 
thority. Belief  is  not  grounded  on  authority,  but 
authority  is  realized  through  belief.  Christ's  words 
become  authoritative  through  faith  ;  faith  does  not 
come  because  His  words  are  authoritative.  His 
sovereignty  is  felt  to  be  legitimate  and  absolute,  be- 
cause His  absolute  truth  is  recognized  ;  and  to  this 
recognition,  authority,  in  the  Roman  sense,  not  only 
does  not  contribute,  but  is  through  and  through 
opposed.  To  believe  in  Christ  because  of  the 
church's  decrees  and  determinations,  is  to  believe  in 
the  church,  not  in  Christ,  and  to  accept  its  infalli- 
bility instead  of  His  sovereignty.  The  authority 
based  on  truth  as  believed  and  loved,  is  in  harmony 
with  reason  ;  the  political  authority  that  claims  to  be 
the  basis  and  infallible  judge  of  truth,  is  contrary  to  it. 

And  the  distinction  just  drawn  holds  as  much  of 
the  Bible  and  the  church,  as  of  Christ  and  the 
church.  The  Bible  never  was  to  Protestants  an 
authority  in  the  same  or  even  in  a  kindred  sense  with 


REASON  AND  RELIGION 


235 


that  in  which  Rome  was  an  authority  to  Romanists. 
The  difference  comes  out  in  its  most  manifest  form 
in  the  so-called  principle  or  doctrine  of  private  judg- 
ment ;  which  means  that  the  Bible  was,  by  its  very 
nature,  not  a  body  of  formal  ex  cathedrd  determina- 
tions, but,  as  it  were,  the  home  and  source  of  the 
material  that  was  to  be  determined  by  the  living 
Christian  spirit,  as  illumined  and  guided  by  the  in- 
dwelling Spirit  of  God — the  testimonium  Spiritus 
Sancti  externum  sealed  by  the  testimonium  Spiritus 
Sancti  internum.  To  this  position  the  exercise  of  per- 
sonal thought  was  a  necessity ;  truth  could  be  authori- 
tative only  as  it  was  believed,  and  belief  was  possible 
only  as  the  mind  was  convinced  and  satisfied.  This 
does  not  mean  that  men  must  follow  an  argumenta- 
tive process  before  they  can  believe :  but  it  does  mean 
that  it  is  always  their'right,  and,  in  certain  cases,  it 
may  be  their  manifest  duty  so  to  do.  In  saying  this 
we  say  that  religion  is  truth,  and  has  as  truth  nothing 
to  fear  from  the  freest  exercise  of  the  reason,  though 
much  to  fear  from  the  partial  or  prejudiced  or  slug- 
gish intellect ;  that  the  only  authority  possible  to  it, 
or  the  persons  who  bring  and  realize  it,  is  the 
sovereignty  that  comes  of  its  and  their  imperial  and 
imperative  truth.  Such  an  attitude  seems  to  me  the 
only  attitude  that  has  living  faith  either  in  God  or 
religion,  either  in  Christ  or  His  kingdom.  If  I  read 
His  mind  aright,  He  would  rather  have  His  Church 
live  face  to  face  and  contend  hand  to  hand  with  the 
questioning  and  critical  reason,  than  see  it  hedged 


236 


CATHOLICISM 


round  by  the  most  peremptory  and  invulnerable  in- 
fallibility. It  is  too  wide  and  too  comprehensive  to 
be  so  hedged  in  :  for  now,  as  of  old,  God  does  not 
leave  Himself  anywhere  without  a  witness.  His 
lines  have  gone  out  through  all  the  earth,  and  His 
word  to  the  end  of  the  world. 
December,  1885. 


VI 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  THE 
CATHOLIC  REVIVAL 

§  I.    The  Biography 

i.  A  yfR-  PURCELL'S  Life  of  Cardinal  Manning1 
-LVJ-  is  a  book  which  awakens  the  most  oppo- 
site feelings,  and  the  most  contradictory  judgments. 
Its  author  has  been  a  sort  of  inverted  Balaam  :  called 
in  to  bless  the  Cardinal,  he  has  yet,  in  the  view  of  his 
admirers  and  friends,  cursed  him  altogether.  Then, 
his  literary  offences  are  too  many  and  too  flagrant  to 
allow  the  mere  critic  to  speak  well  of  his  book.  He 
is  certainly  no  master  in  the  craft  of  letters  ;  style 
he  knows  not ;  order,  chronology,  easy  and  correct 
reference,  continuity  of  narrative,  consecutiveness  of 
thought,  economy  in  the  use  of  material,  coherence 
and  vividness  of  portraiture,  are  things  to  which  he 
has  not  attained.  He  is  a  laborious  biographer,  but 
an  inaccurate  writer,  manifestly  unacquainted  with 
the  religious  history  of  our  times,  unable  on  this 


1  Life  of  Cardinal  Manning,  Archbishop  of  Westminster.  By 
Edmund  Sheridan  Purcell,  Member  of  the  Roman  Academy 
of  Letters.    London  :  Macmillan  &  Co.,  1895. 

237 


238 


CATHOLICISM 


account  to  interpret  many  of  his  own  documents  or 
deal  intelligently  with  the  characters,  careers,  and 
opinions  of  many  of  the  persons  who  crowd  his 
pages.  The  book  is  thus  difficult  to  read,  a  sore  tax 
on  one's  patience,  a  continual  trial  to  one's  temper, 
mocking  during  perusal  all  attempts  at  a  fair  and 
balanced  judgment.  But  when  one  has  finished  the 
book,  and  retreated  from  it  far  enough  to  see  it  in 
perspective,  and  as  a  whole,  some  very  remarkable 
qualities  begin  to  show  themselves.  It  is,  perhaps, 
rather  a  frank  than  an  honest  book,  written  by  a  man 
whose  lack  of  insight  is  redeemed  by  a  sort  of  blunt 
courage,  guided  by  a  rather  robust  common-sense. 
He  is  anxious  to  be  just,  yet  does  not  quite  foresee 
the  effects  of  his  justice.  His  judgments  are  at  once 
candid  and  naive,  the  judgments  of  a  man  who  has 
lived  in  a  very  narrow  circle,  has  mistaken  its  whis- 
pers for  the  murmur  of  the  world,  and  has  published, 
to  the  dismay  of  multitudes,  the  gossip  it  likes  to 
talk  but  does  not  love  to  print.  In  its  light  he  has 
studied  his  documents,  and  inquired  at  his  living 
sources ;  and  then  he  has  laboriously  poured  out  the 
results  in  this  book,  which,  though  a  marvel  of  cumu- 
lative and  skilled  awkwardnesses,  yet  leaves  us  with 
a  distinct  and  breathing  image  of  its  hero,  who  is 
certainly  no  pallid  shadow,  but  an  actual  person,  all 
too  concrete  and  articulate.  This  is  no  small  merit, 
and  rare  enough  in  modern  biography  to  deserve 
cordial  praise. 

But  the  value  of  the  book  does  not  lie  in  the  text 


CARDINAL 


MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL 


239 


of  its  author,  but  in  the  original  documents  it  con- 
tains. The  question  as  to  the  right  or  wrong  of  their 
publication  is  not  one  for  me  to  discuss  ;  what  is 
obvious  is  that  access  to  first-hand  authorities  is 
always  a  gain  to  historical  knowledge.  Cardinal 
Manning  was  neither  a  recluse  nor  a  private  citizen, 
but  a  man  who  lived  for  more  than  half  a  century  in 
the  full  blaze  of  the  public  eye.  From  the  first  he 
was  a  conspicuous  figure,  the  leader  of  an  army ;  a 
man  of  strong  loves  and  intense  hates,  who  handled 
too  many  men,  fought  too  many  battles  both  in  the 
dark  and  in  the  day — in  a  word,  was  too  much  a  force 
working  for  change  and  conflict — to  be  commemorated 
in  a  biography  which  should  be  at  once  innocuous 
and  veracious.  If  his  life  had  caused  no  alarm  or 
given  no  offence,  it  might  have  been  edifying,  but 
would  not  have  been  informing  ;  for  it  would  have  told 
us  nothing  of  the  secrets  of  his  character,  or  the 
springs  of  his  conduct,  or  the  reasons  of  his  policy, 
But  he  was  too  much  the  sum  of  certain  great 
moments  and  events  to  be  dealt  with  as  a  delicate 
plant,  or  hidden  within  the  murky  atmosphere  'of 
circumspect  commonplace.  More  harm  is  done  by 
the  diplomatic  suppression  of  the  truth  than  by  its 
frank  publication  ;  the  one  is  the  way  of  wisdom,  the 
other  of  discretion ;  and  the  promise  is  that  wisdom, 
not  discretion,  shall  be  justified  of  her  children. 

Of  course,  I  feel  that  the  character  of  a  lost  leader 
is  not  a  thing  to  be  lightly  dealt  with.  While  he 
lives  his  reputation  is  his  own ;  but  after  his  death  it 


240 


CA  THOLICISM 


becomes  man's,  every  blot  upon  it  being  a  stain,  as  it 
were,  upon  our  common  good.  It  can  never  be  to 
the  advantage  of  religion  that  any  religious  man 
should  be  dispraised.  The  heroes  of  Protestantism 
are  no  reproach  to  Catholicism  ;  the  saints,  the 
Catholic  Church  reveres,  the  Protestant  Church  grows 
better  by  admiring.  There  is  nothing  that  so  proves 
poverty  of  soul  as  the  tendency,  so  common  in  eccle- 
siastical controversy,  to  make  our  own  plain  features 
look  comely  by  darkening  the  fairer  features  of 
another  face.  Mr.  Gladstone,  addressing  Manning  in 
his  Anglican  days,  says :  "  Your  character  is  a  part 
of  the  property  of  the  Church  and  of  the  truth  in  the 
Church,  and  must  be  husbanded  for  the  sake  of  the 
association  with  that  truth."  1  This  is  even  more  true 
to-day  than  it  was  then,  and  in  a  larger  sense  than 
was  at  first  intended.  In  his  good  name  all  churches 
share ;  and  any  shadow  of  reproach  that  falls  on  him 
will  send  a  chill  through  the  heart  of  all  our  good. 
But  then,  to  attempt  an  analysis  of  his  character  in 
relation  to  his  work  is  to  do  him  no  dishonour ;  what 
the  man  did,  depended  upon  what  he  was  ;  and  so 
we  study  him  only  that  we  may  the  better  watch  the 
evolution  of  a  movement  in  which  he  was  a  potent 
factor. 

2.  What  is  here  termed  the  Catholic  Revival  began 
with  three  men,  whose  spirit  it  may  be  said  to  have 
incarnated  : — Hurrell  Froude,  who  was  its  impulsive 


1  Vol.  i.,  p.  269. 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  2\\ 

force  ;  John  Henry  Newman,  who  embodied  its  intel- 
lectual and  ethical  energy ;  and  John  Keble,  who 
created  the  atmosphere  of  emotion  or  sentiment 
within  which  it  lived  and  by  which  it  was  nourished. 
But  while  these  men  presided  over  its  birth,  its  later 
fortunes  were  shaped  within  the  Anglican  Church 
mainly  by  Dr.  Pusey,  and  within  the  Roman  Church 
mainly  by  Cardinal  Manning.  The  significance  of 
the  personal  factor  has  been  recognized  by  every 
serious  student  of  the  movement,  and  most  of  all  by 
its  leaders  themselves.  The  earliest  expression  of 
this  feeling  is  Hurrell  Froude's  Remains  ;  the  most 
classical  is  Newman's  Apologia  ;  the  largest  is  the 
recently  finished  Life  of  Pusey  ;  and  the  latest,  this 
Life  of  Cardinal  Manning,  which  is,  in  its  original 
documents,  so  largely  the  work  of  his  own  hands.  Of 
these,  the  Apologia  has  the  greatest  personal  value, 
but  the  least  historical  worth.  It  is  neither  a  bio- 
graphy nor  an  autobiography,  but  simply  what  it 
professes  to  be,  a  dialectical  apology  for  a  life  by  the 
man  who  had  lived  it.  The  real  history  is  not  there, 
but  only  a  history  idealized — all  the  more  completely 
that  the  ideal  represents  a  reality  seen  in  retrospect, 
and  under  the  transfiguring  light  of  a  superlative 
ratiocinative  genius,  whose  imagination  made  his 
successive  experiences  like  steps  in  the  logical 
process  which  led  him  from  a  dubious  to  an  assured 
and  infallible  faith.  But  a  man's  history  is  too  com- 
plex a  thing  to  be  done  into  any  dialectic,  even 
though  it  be  the  supreme  feat  of  the  most  dexterous 

16 


242 


CATHOLICISM 


dialectician  of  his  age.  The  mistakes,  the  falterings, 
the  lapses,  the  blind  gropings,  the  ignorances,  the 
confusions,  the  unreasoning  likes  and  dislikes  which 
marked  the  actual  way  of  the  man  are  lost  sight  of> 
forgotten,  or  softened  out  of  all  significance  ;  the  end 
being  made  to  illuminate  the  beginning  rather  than 
the  beginning  to  explain  the  end.  Froude's  Remains, 
on  the  other  hand,  have  even  more  historical  than 
personal  worth.  Here  we  see  the  man  as  he  actually 
lived,  the  circle  he  lived  in,  how  they  thought  and 
spoke,  believed  and  acted.  The  men  are  intensely 
sincere,  but  curiously  superficial ;  where  most  thor- 
oughly in  earnest,  there  most  audaciously  ignorant, 
full  of  the  inconsiderate  speech  which  came  of 
hatreds  they  were  too  impatient  to  justify  and  too 
prejudiced  to  be  ashamed  of.  In  the  Remains,  in  the 
Tracts,  and  in  the  private  correspondence,  when  we 
can  get  it  unexpurgated,  the  real  men  live  ;  and 
history  must  know  the  real  man  before  it  can  con- 
strue the  man  idealized.  Now  this  Life  of  Manning 
is  full  of  the  same  sort  of  documents  as  Froude's 
Remains.  We  have  not  all  we  could  wish,  but  we 
have  enough  to  be  grateful  for.  We  have  the  man  in 
his  every-day  habit,  in  the  flesh-and-blood  reality  of 
his  ecclesiastical  being  ;  and  we  can  interpret  him  in 
terms  we  owe  altogether  to  himself,  or  to  the  men  he 
worked  with,  and  for,  and  through.  We  are  admit- 
ted into  his  secret  soul,  we  hear  his  solemn  confes- 
sions or  astute  suggestions  to  the  men  he  trusted  ;  and 
then  we  have  the  records  of  the  public  policy  which 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  243 


now  contradicted  and  now  carried  out  his  inner  mind. 
What  this  biography  does,  no  other  and  later  bio- 
graphy can  ever  undo  ;  for  what  gives  it  character  is 
not  what  the  author  writes,  but  what  he  publishes. 
The  picture  is  not,  indeed,  quite  complete ;  some  of 
Manning's  most  characteristic  letters,  written  at  the 
crisis  of  his  career,  perished  under  his  own  hand.  By 
the  same  hand  certain  of  his  diaries  and  memoranda 
have,  as  a  rule  at  the  most  critical  places  or  in  con- 
nection with  the  most  decisive  events,  been  expur- 
gated, amended,  adjusted  to  reminiscence,  adapted  to 
history  ;  but,  happily,  the  untouched  originals  reflect 
the  living  man.  And  it  is  the  man  as  he  lived,  and 
not  the  man  apologetically  idealized,  which  explains 
the  history  he  contributed  to  make. 

§  II.  The  Character  of  the  Man 

In  attempting  an  estimate  and  analysis  of  Man- 
ning's character  in  relation  to  his  work,  we  shall,  as 
far  as  possible,  confine  ourselves  to  the  documents 
our  author  has  published.  We  cannot,  indeed,  en- 
tirely dismiss  the  author  from  our  minds,  nor  would 
it  be  just  to  do  so.  His  very  attitude  is  significant, 
and  has  been  assumed  not  according  to  his  original 
bias,  but  against  it.  It  is  apparent  that  he  began  as 
an  admirer,  that  he  did  not  mean  to  be  unfriendly > 
and  that  he  believes,  in  the  heart  of  him,  that  his 
hero  could  stand  being  painted  as  he  really  was, 
warts  and  all.  If  he  is  to  be  held  responsible  for 
the  use  of  the  materials  entrusted  to  him,  we  ought 


244 


CATHOLICISM 


also  to  remember  that  the  responsibility  for  much  in 
his  tone  of  mind  and  for  many  of  his  judgments,  lies 
with  the  materials  themselves. 

i.  Well,  then,  looked  at  in  the  light  of  the  docu- 
ments here  published  and  the  inner  history  they 
unfold,  we  may  say  Manning's  character  seems, 
though  strong,  neither  subtle  nor  complex.  Subtlety 
was  too  little  the  note  of  his  mind  to  be  the  dis- 
tinction of  his  conduct.  His  ends  were  clearly  and 
eagerly  conceived  :  and  his  means,  though  often  un- 
derhand, were,  as  a  rule,  obvious  and  simple,  their 
efficiency  lying  in  the  strength  of  his  will  rather 
than  in  their  delicate  fitness.  While  fond  of  intrigue, 
he  was  too  self-conscious  to  hide  his  designs  from 
the  observant.  His  characteristic  qualities  appear 
very  early  in  his  career.  As  a  boy  he  was  averse 
to  real  and  serious  study 1  and,  happily,  without  the 
curse  of  precocity ;  but  he  had  ambition,  claiming 
as  his  motto  Aut  Ctzsar  aut  Nullus?  only  his  am- 
bitions were  as  yet  neither  intellectual  nor  academic. 
He  found  fame  at  Oxford  in  the  Union,  and  once 
he  became  famous,  men  said,  "  Manning  is  self-con- 
scious even  in  his  nightcap."  3  He  "  drew  into  his 
orbit  a  certain  number  of  satellites,"  assumed  "  omni- 
science," and  "  spoke  as  one  having  authority,"  now 
and  then  to  the  disaster  of  his  claims.4  His  reminis- 
cences seem  to  show  that,  even  in  later  life,  he  had 


1  i.  27.  a  i.  28,  48.  8  i.  30. 

4  The  words  of  Sir  Francis  Doyle,  i.  46-7. 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  245 


more  interest  in  himself  than  in  any  of  his  school- 
fellows.1   These  were,  in  a  boy,  natural  traits ;  they 
indicate  a  nature  which  by  attempting  to  conceal 
only  the  more  revealed  itself ;  but  the  traits  natural 
in  a  boy  may  grow  into  much  less  innocuous  qualities 
in  a  man.    Possibly  Manning  suffered  through  his 
whole  career  from  the  want  of  an  early  period  of 
storm  and  stress,  especially  those  higher  and  more 
tragic  religious  experiences  which  do  so  much  to 
purify  the  character.    Accident,  rather  than  neces- 
sity, drove  him  into  the  church  ;  compulsion  of  cir- 
cumstances more  than  the  vocation  which  will  not 
hear  a  "  Nay." 2    He  knew  nothing  of  the  fierce 
intellectual   conflicts   which    vexed   the   reason  of 
Newman,  and  made  his  sermons,  lectures,  and  tracts 
like  the  cries  of  a  soul  in  travail.    He  did  not  enter 
the  ministry  by  the  way  of  sorrow,  and  so  was  not 
redeemed  and  made  fit  for  it  by  suffering.  Comfort 
surrounded  him  from  the  first ;  he  glided  easily  into 
high  position  ;  even  death  was  kindly,  and  removed 
obstacles  from  his  path ;  but,  while  his  tact  is  excel- 
lent, his  intellect  remains  unawakened.    He  was  a 
churchman  whose  conduct  was  guided  by  policy, 
rather  than  a  thinker  mastered  by  convictions.  His 
biographer  notes  with  satisfaction  that  he  served 
under  four  bishops,  and,  while  he  agreed  with  none, 

1  i.  18. 

2  On  this  point  there  was  a  good  deal  of  romancing  later, 
but  the  contemporary  evidence  justifies  the  statement  in  the 
text.   See  i.  86-97. 


246 


CATHOLICISM 


he  made  himself  agreeable  to  all,  and  as  nearly  as 
possible  indispensable.  He  behaved  as  one  who 
sympathized  with  the  Tractarians,  not  as  one  who 
believed  with  them  ;  but  in  the  day  of  trial  it  is  the 
man  who  believes,  not  the  man  who  sympathizes, 
that  endures.  Hence  came  those  early  relations  to 
Newman  which  left  no  memories  Newman  cared  to 
record.  Hence  came  those  extraordinary  vacillations 
of  policy,  resented  by  many  as  duplicities  of  conduct, 
represented  by  his  High  Church  professions  and 
strongly  Protestant  charges ;  his  Fifth  of  November 
sermon,  and  private,  though  rejected,  visit  to  New- 
man at  Littlemore ;  his  studied  neutrality  as  to  the 
professorship  of  poetry,  and  his  uneasy  and,  for 
awhile,  anxiously  uncertain  action  on  Ward's  degrada- 
tion. To  the  same  cause  may  be  traced  a  series  of 
incidents  less  easily  explained  or  defended.  There 
is  his  concern  about  the  trivial  personal  matters  of 
the  sub-almonership  and  the  preachership  at  Lin- 
coln's Inn,  in  contrast  with  his  unconcern  about  the 
loss  of  Newman  and  the  grave  disasters  it  threatened 
to  the  English  church.1  But  his  judgment  as  to  the 
character  and  motives  of  the  seceders  was  more 
extraordinary  than  even  his  unconcern.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone asked  Manning,  amid  the  consternation  caused 
by  the  many  conversions  to  Catholicism,  what  he 
considered  "  the  common  bond  of  union,  the  common 
principle,  which  led  men  of  intellect  so  different,  of 


1  i.  310-12. 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  247 


such  opposite  characters,  acting  under  circumstances 
so  various,  to  come  to  one  and  the  same  conclu- 
sion." 1  Manning's  answer,  which  "  surprised  beyond 
measure  and  startled "  his  interlocutor,  was  this : 
"  Their  common  bond  is  their  want  of  truth."  The 
one  common  characteristic  of  the  men  was  surely 
their  passionate  sincerity,  witnessed  by  the  sacrifices 
they  made  to  conviction  and  conscience  ;  but  Man- 
ning's answer  shows  not  so  much  a  want  of  honesty 
or  charity  as  of  insight  and  intelligence — his  com- 
plete puzzlement  of  mind  as  he  faced  conduct  which 
nothing  in  his  own  experience  could  as  yet  interpret. 
And  the  same  bewildered  and  ineffective  mind  is 
reflected  in  all  the  correspondence  of  this  period. 
Nor,  as  we  shall  yet  see,  did  he  ever  escape  from 
this  inability.  The  timidity  which  is  the  mark  of 
certain  intellectual  limitations  governed  even  his  most 
audacious  policies.  He  was  a  political  craftsman  in 
the  arena  of  faith  and  reason,  and  his  trust  in  ma- 
chinery was  as  great  as  his  distrust  of  mind.  This 
was  the  root  of  his  lifelong  antagonism  not  only 
to  Newman,  but  to  all  Newman's  name  stood  for 
Catholicism  never  meant  to  the  two  men  the  same 
thing ;  they  never  were  Catholics  in  the  same  sense ; 
their  relations  were  not  simply  those  of  contraries, 
but  of  antipathies  based  on  intellectual  differences. 
Their  feud  was  not  a  thing  of  policy,  or  even  of  prin- 
ciple, but  of  nature  and  character. 


1  i.  318. 


248 


CA  THOLICISM 


2.  These  mental  and  ethical  qualities  are  well  illus- 
trated in  what  we  may  term  the  diplomacy  of  his 
conversion — i.e..,  the  policy  which  made  his  outer 
history  in  the  years  which  preceded  it  so  strange  a 
contrast  to  his  inner  or  spiritual  history.  It  is,  on 
any  construction  we  may  please  to  put  upon  it, 
melancholy  as  well  as  "  startling  "  to  find  Manning, 
as  his  biographer  says,  "  speaking  concurrently  for 
years  with  a  double  voice  "  ; 1  but  it  was  by  no  means 
out  of  keeping  with  his  character,  as  some  of  those 
who  had  good  occasion  to  know  him  understood  it. 
The  facts  stand  out  in  the  clear  language  of  his  own 
diaries  and  letters,  and  in  those  of  his  correspondents. 
In  August,  1846,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Gladstone:  "I 
have  a  fear,  amounting  to  a  belief,  that  the  Church 
of  England  must  split  asunder." 2  Entries  in  his 
diary  of  the  same  date  show  what  he  means :  the 
Church  of  England  is  organically  diseased,  because 
separated  from  the  Church  Universal  and  from  the 
chair  of  Peter,  and  is,  for  certain  specified  reasons, 
functionally  diseased  as  well.3  In  an  earlier  month — 
May — he  had  confessed  to  himself  "an  extensively 
changed  feeling  towards  the  Church  of  Rome,"  and 
most  serious  doubts  as  to  the  Church  of  England.4 
In  1847  his  doubts  became  more  positive,  and  so  do 
the  beliefs  which  look  to  Rome ;  two  things  which 
it  alone  can  satisfy,  seem  to  him  necessary  to  the 
church — infallibility  and  the  unity  of  the  episcopate.5 


1  i.  463.         2  i.  317.      3  i.  483-      4  i-  485-     5  i-  467-73- 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  249 


In  the  pathetic  letters,  under  the  seal,  from  this  time 
onward  to  his  conversion  in  1 85 1,  confession  of  his 
inward  mind  is  made  to  Laprimaudaye  and  Robert 
Wilberforce.  Now,  no  man  can  handle  these  letters 
otherwise  than  tenderly ;  to  the  man  who  has  known 
a  great  intellectual  and  spiritual  crisis  they  will  be 
sacred  epistles,  the  record  of  a  soul's  tragedy,  still 
agitated  with  sorrow  and  damp  with  the  sweat  as 
of  blood.  But,  unhappily,  they  are  profaned  and 
shamed  by  the  position  in  which  they  are  made  to 
stand  ;  yet  they  must  stand  there  if  history  is  to 
speak  the  truth.  It  was  no  reproach  to  Manning 
that  he  should  hesitate ;  it  would  have  been  a  real 
reproach  had  he  been  precipitate.  The  issues  were 
too  grave,  the  possibilities  of  mistake  too  many  and 
serious,  the  feelings,  the  hopes,  the  fears  involved  too 
high  and  solemn,  to  allow  a  sensitive  and  honourable 
man  to  be  other  than  painfully  and  laboriously  de- 
liberate. But  this  on  one  condition  :  that  he  be  silent 
and  use  no  public  speech  that  contradicted  his  private 
thoughts  or  mocked  his  own  personal  experiences. 
And  this  condition  Manning  did  not  observe,  nay,  he 
flagrantly  violated.  While  confessing  under  the  seal 
of  secrecy  his  utter  disbeliefs,  he  yet  in  his  charges 
and  sermons,  in  his  letters  to  penitents  and  friends, 
spoke  or  wrote  like  a  man  who  never  knew  a  doubt. 
While  he  openly,  as  it  were  in  the  ecclesiastical 
forum,  argued  in  July,  1848,  as  to  Hampden,  that 
"no  man  is  a  heretic  to  us  who  is  not  a  heretic  to 
the  Church " ;  that  to  the  Church  Hampden  was  no 


250 


CATHOLICISM 


heretic,  for  it  had  not  tried  and  judged  him  ;  and  that 
his  "  public  subscription  of  the  Catholic  creeds,"  as  a 
bishop,  had  purged  him  from  the  charge  of  heresy 1 — 
he  had  yet,  in  the  March  of  the  same  year,  privately 
written  to  Robert  Wilberforce :  "  I  do  believe  Hamp- 
den to  be  heretical  in  substance  and  in  principle.  It 
makes  it  worse  to  me  to  find  that  fact  palliated  or 
doubted." 2  His  public  attitude  was  well  represented 
by  an  answer  he  gave  earlier  to  Mrs.  Lockhart : 
"  But,  Mr.  Archdeacon,  are  you  quite  sure  of  the 
validity  of  Anglican  orders  ? "  "  Am  I  sure  of  the 
existence  of  God  ?  "  he  replied.3  Even  more  signifi- 
cant was  his  conduct  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  The  two 
had  been  intimate,  even  confidential  friends  ;  he  had, 
in  the  phrase  quoted  above,  hinted  his  doubts,  but 
had  found  no  sympathetic  response,  had  received 
instead  an  emphatic  contradiction;  and  was  thereafter, 
throughout  what  seemed  the  frankest  correspondence 
and  intercourse,  silent  as  to  his  secret  mind  till  the 
Gorham  Judgment  made  a  convenient  season  for 
speech.  These  letters  of  his  were  returned  to  him, 
and  "  had,  so  far  as  could  be  ascertained,  been  de- 
stroyed by  the  Cardinal  not  long  before  his  death." 
Mr.  Gladstone  is  reported  to  have  said,  when  he 
heard  of  the  correspondence,  so  unlike  that  with  him- 
self, with  Robert  Wilberforce,  and  the  destruction  of 
his  own  :  "  I  won't  say  Manning  was  insincere,  God 
forbid  !   But  he  was  not  simple  and  straightforward  "  4 


1  i.  478-9.      a  i.  514.      3  i.  449.       4  i.  569. 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  251 


— a  judgment  which  cannot  be  called  in  any  sense 
uncharitable. 

3.  It  would  be  a  radical  misapprehension  to  regard 
this  diplomacy  as  an  accident,  an  exception  to  his 
normal  character,  due  simply  to  the  bewilderment 
of  a  perturbed  and  distracted  mind.  The  conduct 
represented  a  real  and  permanent  quality,  as  it  were 
a  grain  or  bent  of  nature,  which  came  out  on  critical 
occasions,  and  made  intimacy  with  him  to  many 
difficult,  to  some  impossible.  Thus  Canon  Oakeley, 
who  knew  him  both  as  Anglican  and  as  Catholic, 
wrote  of  him  when  appointed  Archbishop  of  West- 
minster :  "  I  wish  I  could  confide  in  him  as  much 
as  I  like  him."  1  So,  too,  Newman  writes  to  Oakeley : 
"  The  only  serious  cause  of  any  distance  which  may 
exist  between  the  Archbishop  and  myself  is  the  diffi- 
culty I  have  in  implicitly  confiding  in  him."2  And 
this  feeling  receives  new  meaning  in  the  character- 
istic colour  and  phrasing  of  Newman's  answer,  de- 
clining Manning's  request  for  an  interview  in  order 
to  mutual  explanations,  and,  if  possible,  reconcilia- 
tion : — ■ 

"  I  say  frankly,  then,  and  as  a  duty  of  friendship,  that  it  [i.e., 
my  feeling  to  you]  is  a  distressing  mistrust,  which  now  for  four 
years  past  I  have  been  unable  in  prudence  to  dismiss  from  my 
mind,  and  which  is  but  my  own  share  of  a  general  feeling 
(though  men  are  slow  to  express  it,  especially  to  your  immediate 
friends)  that  you  are  difficult  to  understand.  I  wish  I  could 
get  myself  to  believe  that  the  fault  was  my  own,  and  that  your 
words,  your  bearing,  and  your  implications  ought  (to  have), 


1  ii.  256.       2  ii.  327. 


252 


CATHOLICISM 


though  they  have  not,  served  to  prepare  me  for  your  acts. 
•   •  • 

"  No  explanations  offered  by  you  at  present  in  such  a  meet- 
ing could  go  to  the  root  of  the  difficulty,  as  I  have  suggested  it. 
.  .  .  It  is  only  as  time  goes  on  that  new  deeds  can  reverse 
the  old.  There  is  no  short  cut  to  a  restoration  of  confidence, 
when  confidence  has  been  seriously  damaged."  1 

No  one  will  say  that  these  are  lightly  used  or 
malicious  words  ;  they  evidently  express  a  judgment 
at  once  well  weighed  and  reluctant.  And  it  was  a 
judgment  in  which  many  shared.  Soon  after  his 
conversion,  in  the  year  1853  or  1854,  while  he  was 
studying  theology  in  Rome,  the  very  man  who  later 
became  his  serviceable  friend  at  the  Vatican  inquired, 
with  evident  reference  to  him,  "  half  in  jest,  half  in 
earnest,"  "  whether  a  man  who  was  already  manoeu- 
vring for  a  mitre  would  make  any  the  worse  a  bishop 
for  that  ?  " 2  After  he  had  returned  to  England  and 
begun  work  as  a  Catholic  priest,  the  then  President 
of  Ushaw  is  reported  as  saying  of  him  :  "  I  hate  that 
man,  he  is  such  a  forward  piece," 3  meaning  that  he 
was  already  seeking  to  thrust  himself  through  and 
past  his  brother  pawns  to  an  important  and  com- 
manding place  on  the  ecclesiastical  chessboard. 
During  the  Vatican  Council  it  was  said  of  him  : 
"  There  is  no  better  hand  than  Manning's  at  draw- 
ing the  long  bow." 4  It  was  characteristic  of  him, 
too,  to  seek  relief  at  the  hands  of  the  Pope  from 
the  oath  of  secrecy,  that  he  might  coach  Mr.  Odo 

1  ii.  305-6  ;  see  also  329-30.  2  ii.  17  note. 

3  ii.  79-  4  >>•  431- 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  253 


Russell  in  the  version  of  the  Council's  affairs  which 
he  wished  to  reach  the  English  Government  and 
public.1  The  man  is  the  same  man  under  all  these 
conditions,  whether  it  be  in  ecclesiastical  or  personal 
matters  :  the  management  of  Wiseman,  the  policy  of 
the  Holy  See,  the  displacement  of  Errington,  the 
control  of  the  Chapter,  or  the  deliberations  of  the 
bishops  :  the  way  of  Providence  is  made  smoother 
and  more  sure  by  the  help  of  a  little  human  diplo- 
macy. Diplomacy  is  always  double-voiced :  and  the 
ear  addressed  has  to  learn  how  to  discern  by  accent 
which  voice  speaks  the  more  truly,  or  rather  the  less 
falsely.  And  there  are  regions  and  affairs  where  it 
is  in  place,  and  there  are  others  where  it  is  not ;  and 
one  would  think  that  the  least  suitable  of  all  regions 
was  the  church,  and  the  least  appropriate  of  all 
affairs  the  decrees  and  policies  of  the  infallible  Chair. 
Yet  here  we  are  made  to  see  it  prevail,  with  all  its 
hateful  accessories  of  intrigue  and  cajolery,  flattery  of 
hopes  and  play  upon  fears.  And  the  curious  thing 
is,  that  while  the  diplomacy  and  the  agent  were 
known,  the  result  was  accepted  with  a  public  silence 
and  submission  which  speaks  of  the  most  wonderful 
discipline  in  the  world. 

§  III.  His  Conversion:  its  Process  and  Reasons 

1.  But,  of  course,  this  analysis  of  Manning's 
methods  or  executive  policies  does  not  carry  us  very 


1  ii-  433- 


254 


CATHOLICISM 


far ;  the  man  had  deeper  and  better  things  in  him 
than  can  be  thus  reached  and  revealed.  We  must, 
if  possible,  get  down  to  his  ultimate  convictions  or 
fundamental  beliefs,  and  discover  both  the  attitude 
of  his  mind  to  them  and  the  conditions  of  their 
validity  to  his  mind.  It  is  only  in  this  region  that 
we  can  find  the  motives  that  governed  him,  and  the 
forms  under  which  duty  appeared  to  his  conscience. 
That  duty  did  appear  to  him  in  a  most  imperious 
form,  is  a  point  too  obvious  to  need  to  be  argued. 
Only  beliefs  and  motives  of  irresistible  potency  could 
have  forced  him  out  of  the  church  of  England. 
Every  inferior  motive,  all  that  could  be  compre- 
hended under  the  world  and  the  flesh,  was  on  the 
side  of  his  staying.  By  going  he  had  almost  every- 
thing to  lose,  and  there  was  no  certain  promise  of 
any  compensating  gain.  It  could  not  be  said  that 
he  was  attracted  to  Rome  by  friendships ;  for  the 
men  who  had  gone  before  him  he  had  no  peculiar 
affection,  with  them  he  had  no  special  affinity,  and 
their  conversion  had  not  been  a  very  manifest  suc- 
cess. We  must  believe,  therefore,  that  he  changed 
under  intellectual  and  moral  compulsion  ;  like  Luther, 
he  could  do  no  other.  But  this  only  the  more  em- 
phasizes the  problem  :  What,  then,  were  his  reasons, 
his  motives  ?  We  have  no  cause  to  doubt  the  truth 
of  his  own  statement — it  was  the  ideas  of  the  unity 
and  the  infallibility  of  the  church  ;  and  the  conviction 
that  these  could  be  found  in  the  Roman,  but  not 
in  the  Anglican  communion.    But  we  have,  in  con- 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  255 


sequence,  a  twofold  problem  :  How  did  he  come  by 
these  ideas  ?    And  what  did  they  mean  to  him  ? 

He  said  that  the  idea  of  unity  began  to  take 
possession  of  him  about  1835,  infallibility  about 
1837-38  :x  but,  at  first,  he  conceived  both  under  forms 
which  upheld  against  Rome.  The  idea  of  unity 
seemed~fb"  follow  from  the  Apostolic  Ministry  and 
its  necessity  to  the  Church ;  where  the  one  was,  the 
other  could  not  but  be.  And  because  the  Anglican 
Ministry  was  apostolic,  the  Church  was  the  same, 
and  so  its  unity  was  assured.  The  idea  of  infalli- 
bility followed  from  the  perpetual  presence  and  office 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  Church ;  where  He  abode 
in  the  plenitude  of  His  illuminative  power  error  could 
not  be,  the  truth  must  be  absolute.  These  two  ideas 
seemed,  then,  to  him  ultimate ;  but  they  involved  as 
their  necessary  consequence  the  independence  and 
autonomy  of  the  Church.  If  its  unity  lived  in  an 
apostolical  episcopate,  and  was  realized  through  it, 
then  the  episcopate  must  be  a  self-perpetuating  body, 
deriving  its  being  from  its  Apostolic  Source,  and 
holding  its  authority  directly  under  its  Spiritual 
Head.  If  the  infallibility  was  real,  then  the  Church 
must  be  free;  for  if  it  could  not  use  its  own  voice, 
but  must  either  be  silent  at  the  bidding  of  the  State, 
or  speak  in  terms  the  State  prescribed,  it  would  have 
but  a  dumb  infallibility,  which  were  of  all  things  the 
most  fatuous  and  impotent.    But  a  series  of  incidents 


1  i-  47* 


256 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


forced  upon  Manning  the  unwelcome  conclusion  that 
there  was  within  the  English  church  no  room  for 
the  realization  or  exercise  of  his  two  fundamental 
ideas.  If  there  was  any  man  both  the  High  and 
the  Low  Church  regarded  as  heretical,  it  was  Hamp- 
den ;  but  while  both  had  the  most  ample  will  to 
convict  him  of  heresy  both  were  powerless  to  do  it ; 
the  strong  hand  of  the  State  shut  their  mouths,  and 
placed  him  where  it  willed.  If  there  was  anything 
more  capable  than  another  of  disproving  at  one  and 
the  same  time  the  apostolicity  of  the  ministry,  which 
was  the  condition  of  unity,  and  the  infallibility  of  the 
church  as  the  home  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  it  was  the 
act  of  the  State  in  putting  a  man  so  unanimously 
adjudged  heretical  into  the  episcopate.  The  con- 
fusion and  controversies  of  the  time  did  not  allow 
Manning  for  a  moment  to  feel  free  from  this  ubi- 
quitous and  inexorable  civil  power,  whose  violent 
hands  reached  everywhere,  and  touched  at  every 
point  his  most  sacred  convictions.  If  he  thought  of 
the  episcopate  as  the  sine  qua  nou  of  unity,  the  State 
mocked  his  faith  by  co-operating  with  a  schismatical 
body  in  founding  a  Jerusalem  bishopric,  and  frocking 
its  new  bishop.  If  he  argued  that  the  church  had 
the  power  to  interpret  its  own  creed  and  enforce  its 
own  discipline,  the  State  was  at  hand  with  the 
Gorham  Judgment  to  prove  his  whole  elaborate 
argument  a  series  of  logical  illusions.  By  slow  de- 
grees he  found  himself  deprived  of  every  alternative, 
and  reluctantly  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  if  these 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  257 


two  ideas,  as  he  had  conceived  and  defined  them, 
were  notes  of  the -true  Church,  he  must  seek  it  else- 
where than  in  the  church  of  England. 

2.  Such  seems  to  have  been  the  process,  stated  in 
its  most  naked  and  simple  form,  by  which  Manning's 
conversion  was  effected  ;  but  of  course  it  was  a  much 
more  complex  process  than  this.  It  did  not  move 
in  a  straight  line,  but  was  zigzag  and  circuitous, 
deflected  by  fresh  currents  of  thought  and  emotion, 
by  new  views  of  policy,  and  by  the  changes  incident 
to  an  agitated  and  distressful  day.  Vacillations  are 
not  duplicities  ;  variations  of  mood  are  not  changes  of 
part.  There  is,  in  the  English  mind,  no  deeper,  or 
more  common  and  characteristic  conviction  than  the 
belief  in  the  sanity  of  the  State ;  the  belief  in  the 
sanctity  of  the  Church  is  not  so  distinctive  and 
inveterate.  The  Churchman  acquires  the  one,  but 
the  Englishman  is  born  with  the  other.  It  is  the 
instinctive  basis  of  his  jealous  guardianship  of  the 
supremacy  of  the  Crown  which,  in  its  essential  idea, 
represents  the  place  and  function  of  the  laity  in  the 
church.  It  means  that,  in  the  view  of  the  English 
people,  it  is  they,  and  neither  the  priesthood  nor  the 
episcopate,  singly  or  combined,  who  constitute  the 
English  church,  and  are  the  guarantees  of  both  its 
unity  and  continuity.  And  we  can  well  believe  that 
this  idea,  though  in  a  blind  way,  now  and  then  seized 
Manning,  and  explains  some  of  his  most  strenuous 
Protestant  utterances,  which  were  visions  of  a  larger 
and  more  historical  Church  than  the  ecclesiastical 

17 


258 


CATHOLICISM 


mind  of  his  day  had  conceived.  But  these  were 
contradicted  by  experiences  of  another  order.  Civil 
action  in  the  religious  sphere  seems,  to  the  ecclesi- 
astical mind,  harsh  and  insolent ;  and,  in  troublous 
times,  sensitive  are  imperious  consciences.  And 
Manning's  conscience  was  here  sensitive,  for  his 
deepest  convictions  were  on  the  side  of  freedom  for 
the  church,  and  they  were  quickened  in  suffering. 
Then,  again,  his  Continental  wanderings,  and  long 
residence  at  Rome,  counted  for  much.  He  was,  when 
in  a  most  susceptible  mood,  isolated  from  England 
with  all  the  coercive  force  of  its  traditions,  social 
customs,  and  ambitions  ;  and  set  in  the  very  heart 
of  new  and  potent  influences,  which  made  him  feel 
what  it  was  to  live  and  worship  in  a  Church-state 
as  distinguished  .from  a  State-church.  The  end  of 
it  all  was  that  change  became  inevitable ;  he  waited 
but  a  fit  occasion,  and  this  the  Gorham  Judgment 
supplied  ;  under  the  shadow  it  so  conveniently  cast, 
he  passed  from  the  Anglican  to  the  Roman  church. 

If  this  analysis  of  the  logical  process  of  his  con- 
version be  even  approximately  correct,  it  places  us 
in  a  position  to  appraise  its  significance.  Within  its 
limits  the  process  was  one  of  marked  logical  cogency; 
but  the  limits  were  marvellously  narrow.  The  thing 
it  most  nearly  resembles  is  a  procession  of  the  blind 
between  two  blank  walls.  The  man  argued  his  way 
to  his  conclusion  with  the  very  slenderest  intellectual 
outfit,  if,  indeed,  considering  the  problems  at  issue, 
he  could  be  said  to  have  had  any  such  outfit  at 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  259 


all.  There  was  a  wealth  of  reasoning,  but  a  paucity 
of  reasons  ;  and  it  is  reasons  that  justify,  and  make 
a  great  thing  mean  or  a  mean  thing  great.  There 
is  no  evidence  that  he  had  even  conceived  what 
infallibility  meant ;  how  it  had  ever  come  to  be  the 
attribute  of  one  church ;  what  the  claim  to  it 
involved  ;  or  how  the  claim  harmonized  with  its 
history.  In  his  charges  and  sermons,  and  in  the 
letters  and  memoranda  here  published,  there  are  the 
usual  current  commonplaces,  now  of  the  Protestant, 
now  of  the  Anglican,  and  now  of  the  Roman  order ; 
but  there  are  no  signs  of  an  awakened  intelligence, 
of  a  man  thinking  in  grim  earnest,  challenging  com- 
monplaces, getting  behind  them,  resolving  them  into 
their  component  parts,  compelling  them  to  give  up 
the  reason  of  their  existence,  to  tell  why  they  claim 
to  be  believed.  For  this  man  scholars  have  lived 
and  inquired  in  vain  ;  for  him  problems  which  touch 
the  very  heart  of  the  formulae  he  plays  with,  have 
no  being.  He  does  not  know  of  their  existence,  he 
cannot  understand  the  men  who  do  know  that  they 
are  and  what  they  mean.  As  a  consequence,  his 
whole  conception  of  religion  is  formal ;  emptiness 
and  shallowness  mark  it  from  first  to  last.  There 
never  was  a  biography  of  a  great  Father  of  the 
church — so  full  of  letters  written  in  supreme  crises 
of  his  own  and  his  church's  history — that  is  yet  so 
void  of  mystery,  so  vacant  of  awe,  so  without  the 
traces  of  struggle  after  the  everlasting  rock  on  which 
truth  stands,  so  without  the  infinite  yearning  to- 


260 


CA  THOLICISM 


wards  the  light,  which  is  as  the  face  of  God.  And 
this  is  due  to  no  defect  in  the  biographer,  but  to 
the  character  of  the  original  documents  he  publishes. 
These  things  are  not  written  in  the  mere  love  of 
being  severe,  but  in  wonder  and  regret,  and  out  of 
deep  conviction.  The  logic  of  Manning's  conversion 
was  the  logic  of  an  unawakened  intellect ;  and  as 
it  was,  so  also  was  his  policy  as  a  father  and  prince 
of  the  church. 

§  IV.  His  Policy  within  the  Roman  Church 

i.  But  now  we  must  proceed  to  an  even  more 
delicate  and  difficult  question — his  policy  and  career 
within  the  Roman  church.  And  here  we  may  be 
allowed  to  remark  that  in  those  days  a  conversion 
was  a  critical  event  both  for  the  convert  and  the 
society  he  entered ;  and  the  more  eminent  the 
convert  the  more '  critical  the  event,  for  it  was  the 
fuller  of  dangerous  possibilities.  The  Anglicans  who 
reasoned  themselves  into  Catholicism  knew  nothing 
of  it  as  an  actual  and  operative  system.  It  was  to 
many,  in  a  sense,  a  mere  algebraic  symbol  ;  they  had 
assigned  to  it  a  definite  value,  and  reasoned  convinc- 
ingly from  it  as  a  fixed  quantity  or  stable  standard. 
And  the  danger  was  that  the  convert  might  find  the 
actual  Catholicism  a  contradiction  of  his  ideal,  and,  in 
the  despair  of  disillusionment,  take  some  rash  and 
irreparable  step.  It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  some 
entered  only  to  return  ;  it  is  an  open  secret  that  many 
remained,  among  whom  we  may  number  the  greatest 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  26l 


convert  of  them  all,  in  discomfort,  disappointment,  and 
despondency,  even  while  cherishing  the  faith  they  had 
embraced.  But  the  dangers  to  Catholicism  were  as 
real  as  those  to  the  converts.  They  were,  as  a  whole, 
personalities  of  no  ordinary  kind,  men  to  be  reckoned 
with.  They  were  all  men  who  had  lived  in  contro- 
versy, and  been  convinced  by  it.  Some  were  men  of 
strong  characters  ;  a  few  were  men  of  fine  intellects 
and  ripe  scholarship  ;  one  was  a  man  of  real  talent,  of 
strong  will,  and  exceptional  angularity  ;  another  was 
a  man  of  rare  genius.  They  had  been  nursed  in 
a  proud  and  aristocratic  church,  had  been  trained  in 
an  exclusive  and  conservative  university  ;  they  were 
accustomed  to  a  society  which  did  homage  to  their 
culture,  and  they  bore  themselves  as  men  who  took 
life  seriously  and  knew  that  they  were  seriously  taken. 
And  it  was  by  no  means  certain  that  the  men  who 
had  defied  the  authorities  of  their  mother  church 
would  submit  to  those  of  their  adopted  communion. 
For  within  it  there  was  much  to  offend  and  even 
shock.  The  culture  was  not  so  fine,  the  tone  was  the 
tone  of  a  sect,  with  the  feeling  at  its  heart  that  in  the 
eye  of  English  law  it  was  mere  Dissent,  and  that  it 
had  lived  its  life  apart,  separated  by  the  penal  legisla- 
tion of  centuries  from  the  main  stream  of  the  nation. 
To  find  themselves  within  a  society  of  this  kind  was 
no  small  trial  to  the  Oxford  Tractarians  ;  to  find  it  a 
society  as  much  divided  by  jealousies  and  feuds  as 
the  one  they  had  left,  was  a  sorer  trial  still.  It  was  a 
question  whether  the  new  men  would  transform  the 


262 


CA  THOU C ISM 


old  society,  or  the  society  subdue  the  men.  What  is 
certain  to-day  is  that  the  possibilities  of  good  which 
entered  with  the  men  were,  if  at  all,  in  a  very  doubt- 
ful degree  realized  ;  while  the  possibilities  of  evil, 
thanks  to  the  men  mainly  concerned,  were  in  no 
small  degree  averted. 

2.  If  now  we  continue  from  this  point  our  study 
of  Manning,  we  must  note  two  things — the  mind  he 
brought  into  Catholicism  and  the  mind  he  found 
there.  His  mind  we  have  seen  in  part :  it  was  formal 
rather  than  creative,  more  rhetorical  than  speculative, 
more  political  than  philosophical,  convinced  that  the 
cardinal  notes  and  necessities  of  the  church  were  a 
political  unity  and  an  official  infallibility.  He  was, 
indeed,  one  of  the  least  intellectual  of  men  ;  and  so  his 
rational  interests  were  always  subordinate  to  his 
social  or  political,  using  these  terms  in  their  proper 
rather  than  their  conventional  sense.  He  could 
understand  enthusiasm  for  institutions,  but  not  for 
ideas.  He  could  never  have  written  The  Idea  of  a 
University,  or  The  Present  Position  of  Catholics  in 
England,  or  the  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  or  The 
Grammar  of  Assent.  He  could  not  understand  the 
man  who  wrote  these  books  ;  or  why  they  should  have 
such  an  extraordinary  influence  ;  or  why  multitudes 
of  men  who  had  no  belief  in  Catholicism  should  so 
admire  their  author.  It  all  seemed  to  him  evidence 
of  an  "anti-Roman"  spirit  in  Newman,1  of  a  proud 


1  ii.  323- 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  263 


intellect,  unfaithful  to  the  Holy  See,  exercising  itself 
in  dialectical  gymnastics  to  the  delectation  of  English 
Rationalism  !  His  eyes  looked  for  help  in  an  entirely 
opposite  quarter.  The  church  he  had  entered  was 
the  Roman,  and  Rome  meant  the  Pope ;  and  his 
supremacy  was  the  infallibility  which  he  was  in 
search  of,  and  without  which  he  conceived  the  church 
could  not  be.  In  practical  working  a  complaisant 
Pope  was  to  prove  a  very  convenient  tool,  and  the 
actual  infallibility  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
ideal. 

The  mind  within  English  Catholicism  was  very 
unlike  what  he  had  anticipated.  It  was  by  no  means 
a  united  or  harmonious  mind,  or  distinguished  by 
anything  really  catholic  or  large.  He  found  a  laity 
"  without  Catholic  instincts,"  worldly,  selfish,  and 
self-indulgent,  all  they  cared  about  being  "the  key 
to  Grosvenor  Square " ;  yet  this  is  not  surprising, 
considering  Monsignor  Talbot's  definition  of  their 
proper  function.  "  What  is  the  province  of  the  laity  ? 
To  hunt,  to  shoot,  to  entertain  ?  These  matters  they 
understand,  but  to  meddle  with-  ecclesiastical  matters 
they  have  no  right  at  all."1  And  the  clergy  were 
even  as  the  laity  ;  "  malcontent  bishops,  insubordinate 
chapters,"  everywhere  "  disloyalty  to  the  Holy  See," 
and  "  the  taint  of  Gallicanism."  The  «  Old  Catholics  " 
were  not  inspired  by  "  zeal  for  religion,  for  the  greater 
glory  of  God,  and  the  salvation  of  souls,"  but  by 


1  ii.  318. 


264 


CA  THOLICISM 


"jealousy  and  prejudice  against  the  converts."  The 
candidates  for  Holy  Orders  were  "a  shifting  and 
discordant  body,  living  under  no  rule."  He  and  his 
principal  Roman  correspondent  agree  in  the  belief 
that  "  until  the  old  generation  of  bishops  and  priests 
is  removed  no  great  progress  of  religion  can  be 
expected  in  England."  It  was  no  wonder  that,  as 
his  biographer  says,  "  Manning  took  a  pessimist  view 
of  the  state  of  Catholicism  in  England,"  and  "  was  at 
that  time  a  pessimist  of  the  deepest  dye."  1  It  would 
have  been  almost  a  miracle  if  he  had  been  anything 
else ;  but  much  of  his  discontent  was  no  doubt 
disillusionment.  He  may  have  expected  to  find  a 
Catholicism  which  corresponded  to  his  ideal  of  an 
infallible  church ;  and  he  had  found  instead  one 
which  corresponded  to  the  ideas  of  a  provincial  sect, 
which  had  suffered  much  from  penal  laws,  but  more 
from  the  narrow  and  insulated  life  it  had  been 
compelled  to  live.  It  was  now  that  Manning's 
character  showed  itself  as  it  had  never  shown  itself 
before.  It  was  not  in  him  to  submit  and  obey  as 
Newman  had  done,  to  go  where  he  was  sent,  lecture 
where  he  was  told,  teach  or  preach  under  humble  or 
under  public  conditions  as  he  was  required,  and 
redeem  himself  from  the  neglect  of  the  community  he 
had  sacrificed  so  much  to  enter  by  commanding  the 
respect  of  those  that  were  without.  Manning,  on  the 
contrary,  knew  his  strength,  and  resolved  to  rule,  that 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  265 


he  might  reorganize  what  he  called  the  "  Church  in 
England."  Catholicism  was  not  to  him,  as  to  New- 
man, an  ideal  system,  full  of  mystic  meanings,  to  be 
loved  for  the  truth's  sake,  to  be  accepted  as  it  was  for 
the  peace  it  gave  to  the  intellect,  and  as  God's  own 
contrivance  for  keeping  His  truth  alive  in  the  world. 
It  was  to  him,  rather,  a  practical  system,  a  machine 
to  be  worked,  an  agency  to  be  made  efficient  and 
effective,  an  army  to  be  ordered  and  officered,  drilled 
and  disciplined,  for  the  conquest  of  England.  With 
splendid  courage,  he  turned  himself  to  this  work  ;  and 
with  no  less  splendid  audacity  and  the  political  skill 
which  results  from  a  fine  blending  of  direct  strength 
and  adroit  diplomacy,  he  proceeded  to  do  it.  And, 
great  as  his  success  undoubtedly  was,  it  would  have 
been  infinitely  greater  if  Catholicism,  and  if  Christian- 
ity, had  not  both  been  more  and  different  from  what 
he  conceived  them  to  be. 

§  V.  Manning  as  Roman  Churchman  under 
Pius  IX 

Manning's  Catholic  career  may  be  said  to  fall  into 
two  periods,  marked  by  two  distinct  tendencies,  if  not 
governed  by  two  very  different  ideals  :  the  period 
under  the  pontificate  of  Pius  IX.,  from  185 1  to  1878, 
and  the  period  under  the  pontificate  of  Leo  XIII., 
from  1878  to  1892.  All  that  our  space  permits  is  to 
indicate  the  respects  in  which  these  tendencies  dif- 
fered and  their  significance. 

1.  Manning's  policy,  or  method  of  dealing  with  the 


266 


CATHOLICISM 


emergency  which  we  have  just  described,  admirably 
expressed  his  mind,  and  was  adapted  to  the  situation 
as  he  saw  it.  In  English  Catholicism  and  the  minds 
that  ruled  it  he  had  no  faith.  He  said,  its  spirit  is 
"anti-Roman  and  anti-Papal,"  and  so  divided  that 
"  our  work  is  hindered  by  domestic  strife."  1  His  cure 
was  to  increase  the  authority  of  the  Holy  See,  to 
deepen  the  respect  for  it,  to  make  the  Pope,  not  in 
name  only,  but  in  deed  and  in  truth,  sovereign  in 
English  Catholicism.  What  this  meant  he  well  knew; 
it  meant  the  success  of  the  man  who  could  best 
please  the  Vatican,  or  who  had  most  influence  with 
the  men  who  shaped  its  policy.  I  do  not  say  that 
Manning  put  it  to  himself  in  this  bald  form  ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  was  with  him  a  matter  of  both  conscience 
and  faith.  He  did  believe  not  so  much  in  an  infallible 
Church  as  in  an  infallible  Papacy  ;  and  he  thought 
that  this  signified  a  Pope  who  did  not  simply  reign, 
but  governed.  Also  as  a  practical  statesman  he 
could  not  but  see  that  the  one  chance  of  making 
English  Catholicism  cease  to  be  local  and  provincial, 
was  by  penetrating  and  commanding  it  by  the  mind 
which  dwelt  at  the  heart  of  Catholic  Christendom. 
But  the  reality  as  he  found  it  and  as  he  used  it  was 
an  ironical  counterfeit  of  the  ideal ;  and  the  marvel- 
lous thing  in  the  correspondence  now  before  us,  is  that 
the  ideal  is  nowhere,  the  ironical  counterfeit  every- 
where ;  and  it  walks  abroad  naked  and  unashamed. 


1  ii.  8i. 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  267 


We  see  Propaganda  sitting  in  council,  its  decisions 
anticipated,  prejudiced,  prejudged  by  its  individual 
members  being  got  at,  primed,  and  prepossessed. 
We  see  the  old  Pope,  potent  yet  feeble,  shrewd  and 
humorous,  obstinate  and  self-willed,  yet  easily  suscep- 
tible to  influence  by  those  about  his  person  and  in  the 
secret  of  his  character  and  foibles.  We  see  the 
chamberlain,  Monsignor  Talbot,  a  willing  and  astute 
go-between,  avid  of  gossip,  violent  in  his  judgments 
and  dislikes,  jealous  for  the  papal  autocracy,  yet 
feeling  the  need  of  manipulating  the  autocrat  in  a 
very  common  human  way ;  keeping  his  correspondent 
informed  of  all  that  passed  at  the  Vatican — who  came, 
who  went,  what  was  said,  and  whether  doubted  or 
believed,  or  how  taken ;  very  anxious  to  hear  what 
was  going  on  in  England  that  he  might  put  things  in 
their  proper  light  and  proportions  before  the  pontifical 
patient.  Then  we  see  his  English  correspondent, 
Manning  himself,  playing  many  parts,  always  deft, 
pointed,  impressive,  full  of  schemes  and  suggestions  ; 
telling  who  helped  and  who  hindered  ;  how  this  bishop 
or  that  chapter  was  to  be  circumvented  or  induced 
to  do  things  they  did  not  mean  to  do.  It  is,  under 
certain  aspects,  a  deplorable  correspondence :  for  it 
unfolds  a  tale  of  sordid  backstairs  intrigues,  is  full 
of  hinted  hates  and  unjustified  suspicions,  and  the 
stratagems  and  policies  devised  and  followed  by 
those  who  would  use  the  authorities  at  the  centre 
as  instruments  for  effecting  their  own  will  at  the 
circumference.    I  do  not  wonder  that  the  successor 


268 


CATHOLICISM 


of  Manning  has  stigmatized  the  publication  of  the 
book  which  contains  this  correspondence  as  a  crime. 
To  one  sitting  in  his  seat  and  burdened  with  his 
responsibilities  it  could  seem  nothing  else.  But  it  can 
hardly  be  described  as  private  correspondence  ;  on  the 
contrary,  the  letters  have  all  the  value  and  function  of 
public  despatches.  They  were  written  by  men  who 
were  not  simply  friends,  but  officials  in  a  great  church. 
They  affected  the  policy  of  a  famous  court ;  they 
determined  vexed  ecclesiastical  questions  ;  and  decided 
matters  affecting  the  happiness,  the  status,  the  charac- 
ter of  some  eminent  and  many  influential  men.  I  do 
not  see  how  they  could  have  been  suppressed,  if  the 
biography  was  to  have  any  veracity  or  historical 
value  whatever.  For  here  we  see  Manning  at  work 
on  the  Catholic  revival  ;  and  are  led  to  the  sources  of 
events  which  puzzled  many,  though  they  might  be 
open  secrets  to  the  initiated.  Mr.  Purcell  says : 
"  Monsignor  Talbot  played  no  mean  part  in  the 
management  of  Catholic  affairs  in  England."  It 
was  easy  "  to  a  man  of  such  infinite  tact  and  skill  as 
Manning  to  gain  supreme  influence  over  Mgr.  Talbot. 
If  Mgr.  Talbot  had  the  ear  of  the  Pope,  the  tongue 
which  spoke  in  whispers  was  not  Talbot's."1  Of 
course  not ;  Talbot  persuaded  the  Pope,  Manning 
persuaded  Talbot ;  and  so  the  papal  policy  which 
he  carried  out  in  England  was,  while  nominally 
the  Pope's,  yet  really  his  own. 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  269 


2.  Into  the  forms,  incidents,  and  developments 
of  this  policy  I  will  not  enter  :  for  to  analyze  and 
describe  it  would  be  a  piece  of  work  too  utterly 
distasteful  to  be  done  justly  or  well.  Any  one  who 
wants  to  know  how  chapters  were  counter-worked 
or  superseded,  how  a  coadjutor  and  designated 
successor  to  Wiseman  was,  in  spite  of  powerful 
connections  and  the  sanctions  of  order  and  custom, 
unseated  and  set  aside  by  the  direct  act  of  the 
Pope,  or  as  he  himself,  according  to  Manning, 
described  it,  "  II  colpo  di  stato  di  Dominiddio "  ; 1 
how  bishops  were  sketched,  discounted,  outwitted  ; 
how  the  Catholic  press  was  handled  and  judged 
when  unfriendly,  and  how  the  more  important  organs 
were  got  possession  of  and  made  to  speak  as  the 
potent  cardinal  willed — such  a  one  has  but  to  study 
the  correspondence  now  published,  and  he  will  see 
the  whole  system  in  operation.  But  there  is  one 
event  too  significant  to  be  thus  passed  over — the 
treatment  of  Newman  and  his  Oxford  scheme.  Into 
the  relations  between  the  two  men  it  is  not  necessary 
to  enter.  Their  tempers  were  incompatible,  their 
minds  dissimilar,  their  characters  different ;  in  a 
word,  they  were  so  unlike  as  to  be  mutually  unin- 
telligible, with  a  sort  of  innate  capability  of  inter- 
despising  each  other.  This  was  intensified  by  the 
similarities  of  their  histories,  but  the  dissimilarities 
of  their  fortunes.    If  any  one  man  was  the  cause 


1  »■  95- 


270 


CA  THOLICISM 


of  the  movement  to  Rome,  it  was  Newman.  His 
logic  made  it  seem  to  many  inevitable ;  and  then 
with  a  proud  but  reluctant  humility,  which,  whatever 
we  may  think  of  his  reasons,  we  can  only  admire, 
he  bowed  his  own  lordly  head,  and  submitted  to 
enter  the  church  of  Rome  by  the  lowliest  door. 
And  the  places  assigned  him,  and  the  duties  laid 
upon  him,  were  such  as  became  his  submission  rather 
than  his  eminence.  Manning  followed  six  years 
later,  and  within  fourteen  years  he  was  Archbishop 
of  Westminster  and  head  of  the  English  Catholics; 
while  Newman  was  to  the  chamberlain  who  had 
the  ear  of  the  Pope  "  the  most  dangerous  man  in 
England," 1  a  man  who  had  never  "  acquired  the 
Catholic  instincts."2  Manning,  too,  thought  him 
dangerous,  the  type  of  "  a  worldly  Catholicism," 
which  would  "  have  the  world  on  its  side  " ;  he  con- 
sidered the  friends  who  grew  enthusiastic  over  the 
Apologia  as  "literally  playing  the  fool";3  and 
said  that  "  the  Anglicans  regarded  it  as  a  plea  for 
remaining  as  they  are."  1 

But  these  are  not  the  significant  things.  Almost 
as  good  a  case  could  be  made  out  against  Newman 
for  his  attitude  to  Manning,  as  against  Manning 
for  his  attitude  to  Newman.  Neither  shows  well, 
especially  when  they  fall  into  amenities  of  the  feline 
order.5     What   is    significant    is   their  alternative 

1  ii.  318.  s  ii.  323,  7iote.  3  ii.  206.  *  ii.  323. 

5  Newman  ends  his  correspondence  relative  to  the  pro- 
posed interview  thus  :  "  I  purpose  to  say  seven  Masses  for 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  2~]l 


policies  as  to  Oxford  and  the  Universities.  Newman 
proposed  to  found  a  Catholic  Hall  or  Oratory  at 
Oxford,  secured  land  for  this  purpose,  and  got  the 
provisional  approval  of  his  ecclesiastical  superior. 
He  may  have  been  guided  by  his  instincts.  He 
must  have  yearned  for  Oxford  as  the  thirsty  traveller 
for  the  well-watered  oasis.  There  he  had  lived  a 
life  he  could  never  forget ;  influence  had  there  been 
his,  and  honour ;  there  he  had  found  the  friends 
who  were  bound  to  him  by  hoops  of  steel ;  his  spirit 
had  quickened  theirs  and  they  had  quickened  his 
spirit  in  return,  making  his  blood  run  warmer  and 
his  pulse  beat  faster ;  in  a  sense,  all  his  friendships 
then  and  always,  were  made  either  in  or  through 
Oxford.  It  was  then,  by  a  necessity  of  nature, 
interpreted  by  experience,  that  he  turned  to  his  old 
home,  possessed  of  the  feeling  that  where  the  passion 
of  his  life  had  been  suffered,  and  its  sacrifice  accom- 
plished, there,  if  only  his  church  would  send  him, 
he  could  most  victoriously  do  the  work  of  conciliation 
and  conversion.  And  among  the  wise  and  powerful 
in  his  church  a  cognate  feeling  prevailed.  The 
Anglican  converts  had  made  obvious  the  need  of 


your  intention  amid  the  difficulties  and  anxieties  of  your 
ecclesiastical  duties."  But  Manning,  not  to  be  outdone 
in  ironical  innuendo,  retorts  :  "  I  shall  have  great  pleasure 
in  saying  one  Mass  every  month  for  your  intention  during 
the  present  year."  So  have  we  heard  arrogant  and  self- 
conscious  superiority,  mistaking  itself  for  piety,  threaten  to 
pray  for  the  soul  of  a  meek  and  saintly  man. 


2J2 


CA  THOLICISM 


English  culture  to  the  success  of  Catholicism  in 
England.  It  was  too  alien,  too  foreign  to  flourish 
on  our  insular  soil ;  it  wanted  the  sentiment,  the 
taste,  the  attitude  to  public  and  domestic  questions ; 
in  a  word,  the  consciousness  which  makes  a  man 
English,  a  person  capable  of  understanding  and 
being  understood  of  the  people.  The  wiser  and 
larger  Catholics  felt,  too,  that  the  more  public  life 
and  high  careers  in  the  State  opened  to  their  sons, 
the  more  was  it  necessary  that  they  should  be 
educated  and  disciplined  in  the  schools  and  univer- 
sities of  the  nation  ;  and  they  no  doubt  also  believed 
that,  in  their  freer  and  fuller  contact  with  the  centres 
of  living  thought,  Catholicism  would  give  while  it 
got,  and  influence  all  the  more  that  it  was  being 
influenced.  Indeed,  considering  the  man  they  had, 
his  name  and  his  history,  it  seemed  as  if  the  very 
voice  of  God  called  them  to  go  where  he  was  ready 
to  lead.  But  this  was  not  the  view  of  the  man 
who  was  then  shaping  the  public  policy  of  Catholi- 
cism. The  question  rose  in  the  last  year  of 
Wiseman's  life,  indeed  only  four  or  five  months 
before  his  death,  when  the  ruling  mind  was  the  mind 
that  was  to  reign  after  him.  Manning  threw  his 
whole  weight  into  the  opposition,  used  all  his  skill 
to  defeat  Newman.  The  common  and  characteristic 
method  was  pursued.  Rome  was  fully  informed  of 
Newman's  defects  ;  his  anti-Roman  tendencies ;  the 
danger  of  sending  him  to  Oxford  ;  the  danger  of 
indulging  those  who  wanted  him  to  go ;  the  certainty 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  2/3 


if  he  went,  that  he  would  attract  the  sons  of 
rich  Catholics  after  him,  and  they  would  be 
"  protestantized,"  "  de-catholicized,"  in  a  word,  made 
more  English  and  less  Roman.  Propaganda  de- 
liberated. Cardinal  Reisach  came  and  investigated  ; 
was  taken  to  Oxford,  shown  over  the  ground  by 
an  opponent  of  the  scheme ;  was  taken  to  Birming- 
ham, interviewed  various  persons,  some  young  and 
quite  inexperienced,  but  was  not  allowed  to  see 
Newman, 1  who  complained  that  he,  "  who  had 
certainly  as  great  a  claim  as  any  one  to  have  an 
opinion,  had  not  been  allowed  to  give  one."  And 
so  the  well-informed  Cardinal  was  sent  off,  while 
a  following  letter  vouched  for  his  competency, 
saying  that  he  had  seen  and  understood  all  that 
was  going  on  in  England.  The  affair  ended  in  the 
only  way  possible  ;  but  what  is  even  more  significant 
to  us  than  the  method  of  the  victors,  is  their  reasons. 
They  are  reasons  of  alarm,  of  fear  of  both  light 
and  freedom.  They  imply  the  most  amazing  dis- 
trust of  Catholicism,  of  its  ability  to  hold  its  own 
in  the  face  of  a  university  which  it  does  not  itself 
control.  There  is  no  sense  of  any  special  mission 
to  the  science  and  education,  to  the  intellect  and 
culture,  of  England.  There  is  no  feeling  that  it  is 
possible  so  to  teach  their  youth  as  to  enable  them 
to  brave  the  fierce  light  which  the  living  academic 
mind  casts  upon  all  creeds ;  or  that  it  is  better  for 


1  ii.  3M- 


1 8 


274 


CATHOLICISM 


a  man  to  know  what  his  opponent  believes  than 
to  grow  up  in  ignorance  of  it ;  or  that  the  man 
who  has  not  understood  another  church  has  not 
believed  his  own.  The  reasons  are  all  of  the 
narrowest  order,  and  where  most  emphasized,  show 
the  essential  uncatholicity  of  this  Catholicism.  It 
must  be  Roman ;  cannot  be  allowed  to  become 
Englrsh  lest  it  cease  to  be  papal.  Yet  a  system 
which  has  no  place  in  it  for  the  most  distinctive 
and  preservative  characteristics  of  a  people  and  a 
state,  is  the  last  system  that  can  claim  catholicity 
as  its  special  attribute. 

3.  The  event  that  is  by  many  considered  the 
crowning  success  of  Manning's  career  is  the  part 
he  played  in  the  Vatican  Council.  That  is  a  larger 
question  than  we  can  here  discuss.  But  there  are 
a  few  things  that  may  be  said  concerning  it.  His 
advocacy  of  the  Council  and  its  decree  was  typical 
of  his  whole  attitude  of  mind.  It  epitomized,  as 
it  were,  his  intellectual  and  spiritual  defects.  His 
religion  was  more  political  than  reasonable,  more 
legal  than  ethical,  more  a  creation  of  positive  law 
than  a  thing  of  spirit  and  truth.  It  shows,  as  almost 
nothing  else  did,  the  extraordinary  limitations  of 
his  thought.  He  never  saw  the  decree  of  Infallibility 
as  it  seemed  to  other  minds,  more  capable  and 
more  learned.  He  rather  gloried  that  the  ignorant 
and  foolish  had  prevailed  over  the  wise  and  prudent. 
Here,  on  the  one  side,  was  he,  a  comparatively 
recent  convert  to  Catholicism,  no  scholar  in  the 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  275 


proper  sense  of  the  term,  no  theologian,  not  well 
acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  church  or  its 
thought,  quite  without  the  scientific  spirit,  or  the 
ability  to  read  with  critical  insight  the  events  and 
forces  which  had  created  the  church  he  adorned ; 
and  with  him  a  host  of  bishops  from  the  more 
backward  regions  of  Catholicism,  though,  of  course, 
not  unrelieved  with  some  of  another  sort.  And, 
on  the  other  side,  were  a  multitude  of  great  scholars, 
learned  theologians,  lifelong  devout  Catholics  who 
knew,  as  he  did  not,  the  genius,  the  career,  the 
achievements,  the  possibilities,  and  the  claims  of 
Rome.  And  yet  their  differences  never  appear  for 
a  moment  to  start  within  him  a  doubt  of  his  position 
or  policy ;  and  he  goes  forward,  manoeuvring  in 
his  own  gay  fashion,  as  if  the  gravest  and  most 
tremendous  of  all  possible  questions  could  be  settled 
in  the  same  way  as  the  affairs  of  his  own  diocese. 
And  his  alarmist  pleas  as  to  the  need  of  arresting 
revolution  by  the  decree  of  Infallibility  are,  alike  in 
principle  and  in  policy,  exactly  on  the  level  of  his 
arguments  against  going  to  Oxford.  The  thought 
or  the  religion  that  is  afraid  to  go  into  the  univer- 
sities of  a  country  will  never  convince  its  reason 
or  command  its  conscience.  The  church  that 
expects  to  stop  the  revolution  by  passing  a  decree 
which  declares  its  head  infallible,  is  like  the  child 
who  stands  on  his  castle  of  sand  and  defies  the 
tide  to  rise  above  the  rampart  he  has  built. 


276 


CA  THOLICISM 


§  VI.  Manning  tinder  Leo  XIII. ,  more  English,  less 
Roman 

I.  But  his  life  was  not  destined  to  end  in  the 
moment  of  victory.  Nemesis  had  in  store  for  him 
something  more  tragic,  yet  better.  The  second 
period  of  his  catholic  life  came,  and  with  it  came 
another  mind  and  policy.  His  correspondent  at 
Rome  passed  away ;  the  old  Pope  died,  and  another 
filled  his  place.  With  the  changed  men  came 
changed  relations  in  Italy  and  in  England.  A  new 
spirit  reigned  at  the  Vatican,  and  the  forces  he 
had  long  commanded  from  Westminster  began  to 
break  from  his  control.  The  change  was  signified 
by  the  honour  which  came  to  Newman,  connected 
with  which  is  a  tale  we  would  rather  not  attempt 
to  tell.  But  the  effect  on  Manning  was  remarkable  ; 
he  became  less  Roman  and  more  English.  He 
threw  himself  with  extraordinary  energy  and 
enthusiasm  into  public  and  social  movements.  He 
became  more  of  a  zealot  in  temperance,  more 
of  a  social  reformer,  more  of  an  English  states- 
man, forward  in  every  public  question  and  work 
of  beneficence.  And  he  became  jealous  of  the 
very  power  he  had  once  so  loved  to  invoke 
and  use,  saying  that  "  I  hardly  know  in  Rome 
a  man,  high  or  low,  who  understands  the  con- 
dition of  the  church  in  the  British  Empire." 1 
And  as  there,  so  here.    He  complained  that  he  was 


1  743- 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  277 


left  alone,  that  "  Catholics  took  no  interest  in  Catholic 
affairs  of  a  public  character " ; 1  that  the  Catholic 
clergy  were  "mischievously  wanting"  in  attempts 
"  to  share  and  promote  the  civil  life  of  the  people." 
And  he  said  that  they  failed  because  they  did  not 
take  the  work  of  preaching  seriously ;  because  they 
had  in  their  midst  a  reaction  against  the  popular 
use  of  "  the  Holy  Scriptures  "  ;  because  they  had  no 
"  perception  or  consciousness "  of  the  reality  in  the 
spiritual  life  of  England,  or  the  meaning  of  the  fact 
that  "  all  the  great  works  of  charity  in  England  have 
had  their  beginning  out  of  the  Church  "  ;  because  they 
laid  too  much  stress  on  "  Sacramentalism,"  priests 
being  in  "danger  of  becoming  Mass-priests,  or 
Sacrament-mongers " ;  because  the  clergy  are  too 
official  and  have  the  vanity  and  weakness  of 
officialism  ;  and  because  they  are  too  controversial 
and  forget  the  truth  that  "destruction  builds  up 
nothing." 2  I  have  found  his  Hindrances  to  the 
Spread  of  Catholicism  in  England,  from  which  the 
above  points  are  taken,  impressive  and  pathetic 
reading.  They  were  written  in  the  summer  of  1890, 
and  show  how  the  old  man  was  feeling  as  he  neared 
the  end.  The  mind  is  more  childlike,  more  wistful, 
more  alive  to  natural  good,  less  strenuous  for 
ecclesiastical  pre-eminence,  full  of  the  great  con- 
viction that  the  church  can  conquer  only  through 
the  love  and  service  of  her  sons.  I  am  happy  to 
find  these  notes  standing  where  they  do.  They 
show  that  to  the  old  man  had  come  a  saner  and 


1  ii.  714. 


2  ii-  773- 


27S 


CA  THOLICISM 


a  nobler  mind.  He  does  not  now  rage  at  his  own 
people  as  anti-Roman  and  anti-Papal ;  he  speaks 
no  more  of  infallibility,  looks  no  more  to  Italy  for 
light  and  salvation ;  but  feels  that  Catholicism  has 
much  to  learn  of  England,  and  must  know  and 
love  her  virtues  better  before  it  can  hope  to  win 
her  faith.  We  must  not  call  the  events  that  worked 
this  change  tragic ;  rather  let  us  say  they  were  the 
fruits  of  the  Spirit  of  grace. 

2.  The  writing  of  this  essay  has  not  been  a  pleasant 
task.  Deep  as  is  the  difference  which  divides  the 
writer  from  Manning  and  his  church,  it  would  have 
been  infinitely  more  agreeable  to  write  of  him  in 
another  strain.  But  the  study  of  the  documents  pub- 
lished in  this  book  left  him  no  option  but  to  write  as 
he  has  done,  or  not  to  write  at  all.  He  is  grateful 
therefore  to  be  able  to  strike  at  the  end  a  note  of 
cordial  admiration.  Manning  was  a  vigorous  ad- 
ministrator, a  man  of  policies  and  methods,  who  was 
determined  to  have  work  done  in  his  own  way ;  but 
he  was  not  always  as  careful  as  he  ought  to  have 
been  about  the  means  he  used.  His  early  inclination 
to  politics  was  a  real  expression  of  nature ;  for  his 
aptitudes  were  for  the  service  of  the  State  rather  than 
the  Church,  and  he  loved  and  served  the  Church  as  if 
it  were  a  State.  He  had  the  ambition  that  place 
satisfied,  and  that  could  not  be  happy  without  place  ; 
power  he  loved  more  than  fame,  and  if  he  sometimes 
gained  it  by  ignoble  arts,  he  yet  used  it  for  more 
noble  ends.  He  was  a  man  success  improved  ;  and 
when  the  temptations  which  appealed  to  his  lower 


CARDINAL  MANNING  AND  CATHOLIC  REVIVAL  279 


instincts  were  removed,  he  showed  in  his  age  some  of 
those  finer  qualities  of  nature  and  character  which  we 
miss  in  his  strong  and  aggressive  manhood. 

With  the  passing  of  Manning  the  time  has  come 
for  gathering  up  the  lessons  of  what  is  called  the 
Oxford  Movement  and  the  Catholic  Revival  which  it 
is  said  to  have  effected.  That  cannot  be  attempted 
here  and  now  ;  but  one  or  two  things  are  obvious 
enough.  It  has  not  done,  at  least  as  yet,  for  the 
Roman  Catholic  church  all  that  was  either  feared  or 
hoped.  It  has  made  the  English  people  kindlier  to 
Catholics,  but  not  to  Roman  Catholicism.  For  this 
Catholicism  has  itself  greatly  to  blame.  It  did  not 
know  the  time  of  its  visitation.  It  doubted  where  it 
ought  to  have  believed,  and  believed  where  it  ought 
to  have  doubted.  It  sacrificed  the  Church  to  the 
Papacy,  and  lost  England  through  its  belief  in  Rome 
and  its  use  of  Roman  methods.  This  book  is  full 
of  evidence  that  a  Catholicism  seated  at  Rome,  or, 
indeed,  with  a  head  localized  anywhere,  can  never 
again  govern  the  world.  To  rule  the  Middle  Ages 
was  a  relatively  simple  thing  ;  Europe,  Southern  and 
Western,  was  but  a  little  place,  homogeneous,  with  all 
its  parts  easily  reached,  and  all  its  forces  so  concen- 
trated as  to  be  easily  controlled.  But  the  Christian 
world  to-day  is  another  matter;  vast,  populous,  diver- 
sified, full  of  many  minds,  and  of  minds  touched  with 
a  freedom  that  ecclesiastical  authority  cannot  bind. 
Government  of  such  a  world  from  a  single  centre  has 
ceased  to  be  any  longer  possible  :  all  that  survives  of 
it  is  appearance  and  make-believe.    For  the  centre 


2S0 


CA  THOLICISM 


must  be  got  to  do  as  the  circumference  requires ;  and 
so  the  authorities  in  the  provinces  negotiate  and 
intrigue  at  the  capital,  that  their  will  may  be  done 
there,  in  order  that  what  seems  its  will  may  be  done 
within  their  borders.  Then,  the  attitude  of  Catho- 
licism to  thought  is  a  radical  weakness.  The  less 
it  can  mingle  with  the  world  in  the  free  marts  of 
knowledge,  the  less  will  the  world  mind  what  it  says. 
The  authority  that  does  not  speak  reasonable  things, 
reason  will  not  hear.  And  Catholic  thought  taken  as 
a  whole  is  a  peculiarly  sectional  thing,  apologetical, 
polemical,  standing  outside  the  large  movements  of 
modern  literature  and  science.  Within  Catholicism 
itself,  then,  there  seems  to  us  no  promise  of  victory 
over  the  mind,  or  control  over  the  destinies,  of  our 
people.  But  it  is  possible  that  forces  outside  the 
Catholic  ranks  may  repeat  by-and-by  the  story  of  fifty 
years  ago.  As  the  danger  of  the  Low  Church  party 
was  its  affinity  with  Dissent,  the  danger  of  the  High 
Church  is  its  affinity  with  Rome  :  and  affinity  has  a 
trick  of  turning  into  identity.  But  one  thing  is  certain. 
The  English  people  are,  and  intend  to  remain,  masters 
of  their  own  religion  in  their  own  churches  ;  and  they, 
and  not  the  clergy,  will  be  the  arbiters  of  our  des- 
tinies. Manning  found  the  English  Catholic  laity  too 
strong  even  for  him,  and  in  the  other  churches  the 
laity  are — well,  the  English  people ;  and  in  religion, 
as  in  other  things,  they  are  a  people  who  have,  when 
the  need  arises,  a  masterful  way  of  settling  matters 
according  to  their  own  mind. 
March,  1896. 


VII 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— THE  OLD  AND 
THE  NEW 

THE  book1  which  has  suggested  this  discussion 
may  be  described  as  a  new  series  of  "  Tracts 
for  the  Times  "  ;  but  the  "  Times  "  have  changed,  and 
with  them  the  "  Tracts."  The  noise  of  battle  is  not 
in  the  new  as  in  the  old  ;  the  writers  have  been  born 
in  the  age  of  "  sweet  reasonableness  "  ;  they  do  not 
indignantly  address  an  apostate  church,  or  an  impious 
State,  but  seek  gently  to  succour  a  "  distressed  faith," 
loving  the  faith  and  pitying  its  distress.  They 
believe  that  "  the  epoch  in  which  we  live  is  one 
of  profound  transformation,  intellectual  and  social, 
abounding  in  new  needs,  new  points  of  view,  new 
questions,  and  certain  therefore  to  involve  great 
changes  in  the  outlying  departments  of  theology." 
The  qualification  is  careful,  but  more  easily  made 
than  applied  ;  a  change  in  the  circumference  of  a 
circle  changes  the  circle  all  the  same.  "Theology,"  it 
is  confessed,  "  must  take  a  new  development "  ;  but 

1  Lux  Mundi.  A  Series  of  Studies  in  the  Religion  of  the 
Incarnation.  Edited  by  Charles  Gore,  M.A.,  Principal  of 
Pusey  House,  Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford.  London  : 
John  Murray. 

281 


282 


CA  TIIOLICISM 


"  a  new  development,"  though  it  be  of  but  a  single 
organ,  affects  the  whole  organism,  all  its  parts  in  all 
their  relations,  internal  and  external.  "To  such  a 
development  these  studies  attempt  to  be  a  contri- 
bution." The  writers  are  men  of  learning,  piety, 
and  sincerity,  "  servants  of  the  Catholic  Creed  and 
Church  "  ;  but  they  are  also  believers  in  evolution  and 
in  theology  as  a  living  science.  The  combination  is 
excellent.  "  The  Creed  and  Church  "  are  the  organ- 
ism, the  men  are  its  living  energies,  the  forces  and 
conditions  of  the  time  are  the  environment ;  and  if 
the  thoughts  generated  in  the  environment  penetrate, 
quicken  and  modify  the  energies  of  the  organism,  we 
may  contentedly  leave  the  new  life  to  reckon  with  the 
old  restrictions. 

A  book  like  this  is  suggestive  of  many  things, 
especially  of  the  changes  that  have  happened  within 
the  last  sixty  years.  In  1833  the  first  issue  of  the 
"  Tracts  "  began,  breathing  the  courage,  defiance,  and 
furious  despair  of  a  forlorn  hope  ;  in  1890,  the  men 
who  have  replaced  the  old  leaders  are  within  the 
citadel,  victorious,  proposing  their  own  terms  of  peace. 
The  revolution  has  come  full  cycle  round,  which 
means  the  counter-revolution  is  at  hand.  It  were  a 
curious  question,  why,  in  what  is  fancied  to  be  a 
critical  and  sceptical  age,  so  extraordinary  a  revolu- 
tion has  been  achieved.  Perhaps  this  very  critical 
scepticism  has  helped  to  achieve  it.  Sceptical  are 
always  credulous  ages  ;  the  more  radical  the  disbelief 
in  things  fundamental,  the  easier  the  belief  in  things 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  283 


accidental  ;  where  faith  in  God  is  hardly  possible, 
acceptance  of  an  ancient  historical  church  may  be 
as  agreeable  as  it  is  convenient.  It  belongs  to  the 
region  of  the  phenomenal,  it  lives  in  the  field  of 
experience  ;  and  so  men  who  think  God  too  transcen- 
dental for  belief,  may  conceive  the  church  as  real 
enough  to  be  deferentially  treated.  The  thing  is 
perfectly  natural :  what  has  died  to  the  reason  may 
live  all  the  more  tenderly  in  reminiscence.  Make  a 
thing  beautiful  to  such  persons,  and  it  becomes  attrac- 
tive, which  is  an  altogether  different  matter  from  its 
being  true  or  credible.  But  one  thing  is  clear,  the  real 
cause  of  success  has  been  faith ;  for  victories  are  won 
only  by  men  of  convinced  minds.  In  this  case  they 
have  been  mocked,  ridiculed,  and  have  looked  ridicu- 
lous ;  but  they  have  been  in  earnest,  and  have  pre- 
vailed. Over  them  our  modern  Samuel  Butlers  have 
made  merry,  collecting  the  materials  for  a  new 
Hudibras,  richer  than  the  old  in  the  grotesqueries 
of  sartorial  pietism,  and  the  too  consciously  conscien- 
tious scrupulosities  of  the  well-applauded  martyr  for  a 
rite  or  a  robe  ;  only  in  this  case  the  robe  is  not  the 
livery  of  "  the  scarlet  woman,"  or  the  deadly  splen- 
dours of  the  "Babylonish  garment,"  but  the  very 
garniture,  the  sacred  and  seemly  vestments  of  the 
truth  of  God.  The  situation  is  full  of  exquisite  irony; 
the  delusion  of  the  old  hyper-Calvinist,  who  was  sure 
only  of  two  things,  his  own  election  and  the  reproba- 
tion of  the  immense  multitude,  becomes  seemly  and 
sane  beside  its  modern  parallel — the  superb  egotism 


284 


CA  THOLICISM 


which  enables  many  excellent  but  most  commonplace 
men  to  believe  that  their  order,  whose  constituents 
are  often  selected  and  formed  in  a  most  perfunctory 
way,  is  necessary  to  the  Church  of  God,  and  has  com- 
mand over  the  channels  and  the  instruments  of  His 
grace.  If  Englishmen  had  their  old  sense  of  humour, 
the  notion  could  not  live  for  a  single  hour;  and  where 
humour  fails,  so  coarse  a  thing  as  ridicule  has  no 
chance  of  success.  For  ridicule  is  the  test  of  truth 
only  to  men  who  fear  laughter  more  than  God.  Men 
like  Samuel  Butler  see  a  very  little  way  into  the  heart 
of  things — nay,  do  not  see  the  things  that  lie  on  the 
surface  as  they  really  are.  The  man  who  has  a  genius 
for  caricature  has  a  bad  eye  for  character  ;  he  who  is 
always  in  search  of  the  ridiculous  never  finds  the 
truth.  So  Anglo-Catholicism,  if  it  is  to  be  understood, 
must  be  studied  from  within  as  well  as  from  without ; 
in  relation  indeed  to  the  forces  that  created  its  oppor- 
tunity and  conditioned  its  progress,  but  also  as  it  lives 
in  the  minds  and  to  the  imaginations  of  the  men  who 
have  been  its  chiefs  and  spokesmen. 

§  I.    The  Outer  Factors  of  the  Revival 

The  Anglo-Catholic  revival  may  be  said  to  have 
been  in  its  origin  the  product  01  three  main  factors : 
Liberalism,  the  inadequacy  of  the  old  church  parties 
to  the  new  situation,  and  the  spirit  of  Romanticism  in 
religion.  The  political  conditions  supplied  the  provo- 
cative or  occasional  cause  ;  the  inability  of  the  exist- 
ing ecclesiastical  parties  to  deal  with  the  emergency 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  285 


supplied  the  opportunity  ;  while  the  Romanticist  ten- 
dency in  literature  supplied  the  new  temper,  method, 
standpoint,  and  order  of  ideas.  Our  remarks  on  these 
points  must  be  of  the  briefest. 

1,  It  is  usual  to  make  1833,  the  year  when  the  issue 
of  the  Tracts  began,  the  beginning  also  of  the 
ecclesiastical  revival,  though  for  a  few  years  before 
then  the  waters  had  been  gathering  underground. 
Liberalism  just  then  seemed  victorious  all  along  the 
line,  and  had  effected  changes  that  were  as  to  the 
English  State  constitutional,  but  as  to  the  English 
Church  revolutional.  The  Deists  of  the  eighteenth 
century  had  died,  though  only  to  return  to  life  as 
Philosophical  Radicals,  learned  in  economics,  in  edu- 
cation, in  theoretical  politics,  in  methods  to  promote 
the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,  though 
the  greatest  number  was  largely  middle  class,  and  the 
happiness  was  more  akin  to  social  comfort  than  moral 
beatitude.  The  Roman  Catholics,  just  emancipated, 
were  still  suffering  from  the  social  proscription  which 
in  England  is  the  worst  sort  of  religious  disability  ; 
and  seemed  a  people  with  memories  but  without 
hopes,  with  illustrious  names  but  without  leaders, 
enfeebled  by  having  lived  so  long  as  aliens  amid  their 
own  flesh  and  blood.  The  Dissenters,  strengthened 
by  their  recent  enfranchisement,  and  as  it  were  legiti- 
mated by  the  State,  were  demanding  still  ampler 
rights,  freer  education,  and  universities  that  knew  no 
church,  and  were  also  mustering  and  marshalling  the 
energies  that  were  largely  to  determine  the  march  of 


286 


CATHOLICISM 


reform.  The  Episcopal  Church  was  the  grand  bul- 
wark against  Rome,  and  stood  in  very  different 
relations  to  the  two  forms  of  dissent,  the  Catholic  and 
the  Protestant :  to  the  one  it  stood  as  became  a  bul- 
wark, absolutely  opposed  ;  but  to  the  other  its  relation 
was  rather  mixed.  One  church  party  was,  for  theo- 
logical reasons,  sympathetic ;  but  another  was,  for 
ecclesiastical  reasons,  at  once  tolerant  and  disdainful — 
feeling  as  to  a  superfluous  auxiliary,  which  would 
exist  and  assist  without  either  its  existence  or  assist- 
ance being  wanted. 

The  effect,  then,  of  the  political  changes  had  been 
twofold.  They  had,  on  the  one  hand,  broadened  the 
basis  of  the  English  State,  made  the  terms  of  citizen- 
ship distinctively  civil,  and  incorporated  or  affiliated 
classes  that  had  hitherto  been  dealt  with  as  aliens. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  they  had  worked  for  the 
English  church  what  can  only  be  described  as  a 
revolution.  For  up  till  now  it  had  been,  and  indeed 
still  is,  more  easy  to  distinguish  Church  and  State 
ideally  than  actually  ;  the  English  constitution  may  be 
said  to  have  recognized  their  formal  difference,  but  to 
have  affirmed  their  material  identity.  Parliament  is, 
in  theory,  the  English  people  assembled  for  purposes 
of  legislation ;  the  English  church  is,  in  idea,  the  same 
people  associated  for  the  purpose  of  worship.  The 
supreme  legislative  authority  for  both  Church  and 
State  is  one  and  the  same.  Our  great  ecclesiastical 
laws  are,  as  regards  source  and  sanction,  civil ;  our 
civil  authorities  appoint  the  men  who  fill  our  great 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  287 


ecclesiastical  offices.  Civil  penalties  follow  the  viola- 
tion of  ecclesiastical  laws,  and  our  ultimate  ecclesias- 
tical tribunals  are  all  civil.  The  Act  of  Uniformity 
was  passed  and  enforced  by  the  civil  power,  and  under 
it  dissent  was  a  civil  offence  punished  by  civil  and 
political  penalties.  The  same  power  determined  at 
once  the  books  to  be  subscribed,  the  persons  who  were 
to  subscribe  them,  and  the  terms  of  the  subscription. 
The  practice  was  intelligible  and  logical  enough  on 
the  theory  that  Church  and  State  were,  though 
formally  different,  materially  identical ;  each  was  the 
same  thing  viewed  under  a  different  aspect,  the  civil 
legislature  being  at  the  same  time  in  its  own  right  also 
the  ecclesiastical.  So  long  as  the  theory  even  toler- 
ably corresponded  with  fact,  the  system  could  be  made 
to  work  ;  but  once  Church  and  State  ceased  to  be,  and 
to  be  considered  as  being,  co-extensive,  the  system 
became  at  once  illogical,  unreal,  and  impracticable. 
Now,  the  Acts  which  emancipated  the  Catholics  and 
abolished  the  Tests,  declared  that  for  the  State  dissent, 
whether  Catholic  or  Protestant,  had  ceased  to  exist ; 
that  to  a  man  as  a  citizen,  it  could  no  longer  apply 
the  categories  of  Conformist  or  Nonconformis  ;  in 
other  words,  it  might  be  a  State  with  a  Church,  but 
had  ceased  to  be  a  State  that  was,  or  tried  to  be,  a 
Church.  Nor  did  this  change  stand  alone  ;  it  involved 
another  more  flagrant,  if  not  so  radical.  Dissenters, 
Catholic  and  Protestant,  had  not  only  by  the  State 
been  abolished  for  the  State  ;  but  they  could  sit  in 
Parliament,  and  perform  all  the  functions  of  legislators 


288 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


without  any  irritating  condition  of  occasional  con- 
formity, or  pledge  to  respect  what  they  did  not  believe. 
And  as  Parliament  was  the  supreme  Legislature  for 
the  Church  as  well  as  for  the  State,  it  happened  that 
men  whose  distinctive  note  was  dissent  from  the 
church,  were,  by  a  constitutional  change  which  en- 
larged and  benefited  the  State,  invested  with  legisla- 
tive authority  over  the  church  they  dissented  from  ; 
and  men  the  church  could  not  truthfully  recognize  as 
fully  or  adequately  Christian,  became,  by  civil  action 
and  on  civil  grounds,  lawgivers  for  the  very  church 
that  refused  them  recognition.  The  anomalies  in  the 
situation  were  many ;  but  to  the  State  they  were  only 
such  as  were  inseparable  from  its  progress  out  of  a 
mixed  civil  and  ecclesiastical  society  into  a  society 
purely  and  simply  civil ;  though  to  the  church  they 
were  fundamental  contradictions  of  its  very  idea  as 
national,  and  as  such  ought  to  have  been  felt  intoler- 
able. And  the  inexorable  logic  of  the  situation  soon 
became  manifest.  The  Whigs  were  in  the  ascendant, 
with  ample  opportunity  to  gratify  their  traditional 
disbelief  in  church  claims  and  their  hereditary  love 
of  church  lands,  especially  as  a  means  of  creating  a 
patriotic  aristocracy.  The  Royal  Commission  on 
Ecclesiastical  Revenues  was  appointed,  the  bishops 
were  advised  to  set  their  house  in  order,  and  almost 
the  half  of  the  Irish  Sees  were  suppressed.  The  out- 
look was  not  hopeful,  and  in  the  church  camp  there 
was  rage  not  unmingled  with  despair. 

2.  Within  the  English  church  the  old  varieties 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD  AND  NEW  289 


of  thought  and  policy  prevailed,  but  all  were  charac- 
terized by  the  same  unfitness  for  the  new  circum- 
stances. The  High  Church  was  at  its  driest ;  the  old 
chivalrous  loyalties  had  become  impossible  ;  and, 
unexalted  by  any  new  ideal,  its  character  had  deteri- 
orated. It  was  like  an  ancient  dame  whose  pride  is 
sustained  by  inveterate  prejudices  and  the  recollection 
of  conquests  in  a  time  too  remote  to  be  pleasantly 
remembered.  Its  original  theory  had  been  built  on 
the  royal  prerogative  :  the  divine  right  of  the  king 
had  denned  and  determined  the  right  of  his  church 
to  be  the  church  of  his  people  ;  its  authority  within 
the  State  was  a  form  of  his,  and  men  could  not  secede 
from  the  church  without  being  disloyal  to  the  king. 
It  was  a  perfectly  intelligible  theory,  and  as  coherent 
as  it  was  intelligible,  but  then  its  primary  premiss 
was  the  king's  divine  right  ;  once  the  premiss  had 
been  disproved  or  made  impossible  by  events,  the 
theory  ceased  to  be  either  intelligible  or  coherent. 
And  disproof  had  come  in  the  most  cogent  form  :  first, 
and  most  disastrously  in  the  revolution  of  1688  ;  next, 
and  permanently,  in  the  Hanoverian  succession. 
But  a  life  without  reason  is  never  a  happy  life  :  what 
obstinacy  keeps  alive  demoralizes  the  obstinacy  by 
which  it  lives  ;  and  so  throughout  a  good  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  High  Church  party  hated  the 
reigning  dynasty,  plotted  treason  in  its  heart,  and  was 
depraved  by  the  treason  it  plotted.  And  when  the 
reconciliation  came,  it  came  not  by  the  theory  being 
so  modified  as  to  suit  a  constitutional  king,  but  by  an 

19 


290 


CATHOLICISM 


attempted  adaptation  of  the  king  to  the  theory. 
Now,  a  party  out  of  harmony  with  the  fundamental 
tendencies  and  principles  of  a  State,  can  never  so  live 
within  the  State  as  to  be  either  an  efficient  or  a 
beneficent  factor  in  its  development.  The  forces  that 
make  for  change  are  forces  it  does  not  understand, 
and  so  cannot  control.  And  so  it  happened  that  with 
the  utmost  will  to  resist,  the  High  Church  party  was 
without  either  the  strength  or  the  faculty  for  resist- 
ance. 

Of  the  Broad  Church,  only  this  need  here  be  said  : 
it  was  inchoate,  perplexed,  struggling  out  of  its  old 
formal  latitudinarian  policy  into  the  new  spirit,  with- 
out, however,  having  found  for  its  idea  a  form  suitable 
to  the  century.  The  Evangelicals,  on  the  other  hand, 
seemed  fuller  of  energy  and  promise,  represented 
what  might  then  have  been  termed  the  type  of  religion 
most  characteristic  of  the  English  people.  On  the 
intellectual  side  it  was  timid,  born^  formal,  closed. 
Its  hatred  of  rationalism  turned  into  fear  of  reason  ; 
it  lived  within  its  narrow  tidy  garden,  cut  its  trees  of 
knowledge  into  Dutch  figures,  arranged  its  flower- 
beds on  geometrical  lines,  but  was  careful  never  to 
look  over  the  hedge  or  allow  any  fresh  seeds  from  the 
outer  world  to  take  root  within  its  borders.  Yet  by  a 
curious  necessity  the  spirit  of  an  age  lives  even  in  the 
strongest  reaction  against  it  ;  and  to  the  formal 
rationalism  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Evangelical 
revival  owed  its  violently  conventional  theology,  the 
foolhardiness  which  could  represent  the  relations  of 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD  AND  NEW  2C-1 


God  and  man  by  a  series  of  formulated  and  reasoned 
abstractions.  But  whatever  may  be  said  of  its 
theology,  the  heart  of  its  piety  was  sound  ;  it  might 
be  narrow,  but  it  was  deep  and  genuine.  Men  who 
did  not  know  it,  took  offence  at  its  manner  of  speech 
touching  the  more  awful  mysteries  of  being,  and 
sneered  at  it  as  c///^r-worldliness.  But  no  piety  was 
ever  more  healthily  and  actively  humane.  Face  to 
face  with  a  corruption  that  might  appal  even  the 
society  of  to-day,  it  pleaded  for  purity  of  manners 
and  created  a  social  conscience  and  moral  shame 
where  for  centuries  they  had  been  asleep.  In  an  age 
which  knew  no  duty  of  rich  to  poor,  or  of  educated 
to  ignorant — save  the  duty  of  standing  as  far  off  as 
possible  and  leaving  them  in  their  vice  and  filth, 
passions  and  poverty — it  awakened  an  enthusiasm 
for  their  souls  and  a  love  for  their  outcast  children, 
which  yet  was  so  blended  with  love  of  their  bodies 
and  their  homes  as  to  coin  the  now  familiar  proverb, 
so  characteristic  of  the  then  Evangelical  faith, 
"  Cleanliness  is  next  to  godliness."  In  a  time  when 
humanity  was  unknown  in  the  prison,  and  a  merciless 
law  became  even  criminal  in  its  dealings  with  the 
guilty,  Evangelical,  and  indeed  specifically  Dissent- 
ing piety  (John  Howard  was  an  Independent,  Mr. 
Fry  was  a  Friend)  began  the  more  than  Herculean 
work  of  reforming  the  prisons  and  Christianizing  the 
law.  In  a  period  when  the  less  civilized  races  were 
regarded  only  as  chattels,  or  as  a  means  of  replenish- 
ing the  coffers  or  gratifying  the  ambitions  or  even  the 


292 


CA  THOLICISM 


passions  of  the  more  civilized,  the  same  piety — in  spite 
of  the  mockery  of  clerical  wits,  and  the  scorn  of  the 
New  Anglicans,  who  could  not  love  the  wretched 
"  niggers,"  because  they  "  concentrated  in  themselves 
all  the  whiggery,  dissent,  cant,  and  abomination  that 
had  been  ranged  on  their  side,"  1  in  spite,  too,  of  the 
antagonism  of  statesmen  and  of  all  interested  classes — 
taught  the  English  people  to  consider  the  conquered 
Hindu,  the  enslaved  negro,  the  savage  African  or 
South  Sea  Islander,  as  a  soul  to  be  saved.   And  so  it 
created  in  England  and  America  the  enthusiasm  that 
emancipated  the  slave  and  helped  to  form  the  rudi- 
ments of  a  conscience,  if  not  a  heart,  in  the  callous 
bosom  of  English  politics,  and  even  in  the  still  harder 
and  emptier  bosom  of  English  commerce.  Nay, 
Evangelical  piety  must  not  be  defamed  in  the  home  of 
its  birth  ;  it  was  the  very  reverse  of  <?///^r-worldly, 
intensely  practical,  brotherly,  benevolent,  beneficent, 
though  somewhat  prudential  in  the  means  it  used  to 
gain  its  most  magnanimous  ends.    He  who  speaks 
in  its  dispraise,  either  does  not  know  it  or  feels  no 
gratitude  for  good  achieved.    Happy  will  it  be  for 
Anglo-Catholicism,  which  we  may,  in  contradistinction 
to  the  Evangelical,  term  the  ritual  and  sacerdotal 
revival,  if,  once  it  has  run  its  inevitable  course,  men 
can  trace  but  half  as  much  of  human  good  to  its 
inspiration.    Great  are  the  things  it  has  aehieved  for 
the  idea  of  the  church,  for  the  restoration,  which  too 
often  means  the  desecration,  of  churches,  for  the 


1  Hurrell  Froude,  Remains,  part  i.  vol.  i.  p.  382. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  293 

elaboration  of  worship  and  the  adornment  of  the 
priest ;  but  the  final  measure  of  its  efficiency  will  be 
what  it  accomplishes  for  the  souls  and  lives  of  men. 

But  two  things  disqualified  the  Evangelicals  for 
adequate  dealing  with  the  emergency — their  intellec- 
tual timidity  and  their  want  of  any  sufficient  idea  of 
the  church.  These  two  were  intimately  related  ; 
their  theology  was  too  narrowly  individualistic,  too 
much  a  reasoned  method  of  saving  single  souls,  to 
admit  easily,  or  without  fracture,  those  larger  views 
of  God,  the  universe  and  man,  needed  to  guide  a 
great  society  in  a  crisis,  or,  as  it  were,  in  the  very 
article  of  revolution.  They  did  not  sufficiently  feel 
that  the  Church  was  a  sort  of  spiritual  Fatherland, 
within  which  they  had  been  born,  through  which  they 
lived,  for  whose  very  dust  they  could  love  to  die. 
The  Evangelicals  have  often  been  described  as  the 
successors  and  representatives  of  the  Puritans  within 
the  Anglican  church,  but  here  they  were  their  very 
opposites.  The  Puritan  theology  was  remarkable  for 
its  high  and  catholic  doctrine  of  the  Church,  so  con- 
ceiving the  sovereignty  of  the  Redeemer  that  the 
body  in  which  he  lived  and  over  which  He  reigned 
could  never  be  dependent  on  any  State  or  subordinate 
to  any  civil  power  whatever.  The  high  Anglican 
rather  than  the  Evangelical  has  here  been  the  Puri- 
tan's heir,  though  the  Anglican  has  lowered  the 
splendid  idea  he  inherited  by  giving  it  a  less  noble 
and  a  less  catholic  expression.  It  was  the  want  of 
such  a  vivifying  and  commanding  idea  that  lost  the 


294 


CATHOLICISM 


Evangelical  the  leadership  of  the  Church  in  its  hour 
of  storm  and  crisis. 

3.  So  far,  then,  it  seemed  as  if  the  battle  against 
vigorous  and  victorious  Liberalism  must  be  fought  on 
the  lines  so  abhorred  of  the  old  High  Church,  the  lines 
of  the  latitudinarian  utilities.  Church  and  State  were 
allies,  their  union  was  due  to  a  contract  or  compact, 
by  which  the  Church  received  so  much  pay  and  privi- 
lege, and  the  State  so  much  service  and  sanction.  To 
argue  the  question  on  this  ground  was  to  be  defeated  ; 
there  was  no  principle  in  it,  only  the  meanest  expe- 
diences, profits  to  be  determined  by  the  utilitarian 
calculus,  with  contract  broken  when  profits  ended. 
It  was  at  this  moment  that  Romanticism  assumed  an 
ecclesiastical  form,  and  emerged,  changed  in  name, 
but  unchanged  in  essence,  as  Anglo-Catholicism. 

Romanticism  may  be  described  as  the  literary  spirit 
which,  born  partly  in  the  frenzy  of  the  Revolution, 
and  partly  in  the  recoil  from  it,  executed  in  the  early 
decades  of  this  century  summary  vengeance  upon  the 
rationalism  of  the  last.  It  was  not  English  merely, 
but  European ;  it  had  achieved  great  things  on  the 
Continent  before  it  took  shape  here.  In  France  it 
produced  Chateaubriand,  whose  rhapsodical  Genie  was 
at  once  a  coup  de  the'atre  et  d'autel ;  Joseph  de  Maistre 
and  the  hierocratic  school,  with  their  idealization  of 
the  Papacy.  In  Germany,  it  blossomed  into  the 
Stolbergs  and  the  Schlegels,  who  preached  the  duty 
of  a  flight  from  the  present  to  the  past,  and  believed 
that  they  preserved  faith  by  indulging  imagination. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  295 


Through  the  philosophical  theologians  and  critical 
historians  in  the  Catholic  faculties  of  schools  like 
Tubingen  and  Munich,  as  represented  by  Moehler 
and  Dollinger,  it  entered  theology,  furnishing  Roman 
Catholicism  with  a  new  and  potent  apologetic,  and 
the  Anglican  with  a  no  less  potent  source  of  inspira- 
tion and  guidance.  Its  characteristic  was  an  imagina- 
tive handling  of  its  material,  especially  mediaevalism 
and  its  survivals,  with  a  view  to  a  richer  and  happier 
whole  of  life.  Rationalism  was  an  optimism  which 
glorified  its  own  enlightened  age,  and  pitied  the 
ignorance  and  superstition  of  the  earlier  men ;  but 
Romanticism  was  an  idealism  which  wished  to  tran- 
scend the  present  it  disliked,  by  returning,  either  with 
Wordsworth  to  a  severe  simplicity,  all  the  more 
refined  that  it  was  so  rustic  and  natural,  or,  'as  with 
Scott,  to  the  gallant  days  of  chivalry  and  the  rule  of 
the  highly  born  and  bred.  All  were  subjective,  each 
used  a  different  medium  for  the  expression  of  him- 
self; but  the  characteristic  thing  was  the  self  that  was 
expressed,  not  the  medium  employed.  The  Lake 
poets  sang  in  praise  of  Nature,  but  it  was  the  Nature 
of  the  poet's  dream,  sleeping  in  the  light  that  never 
was  on  sea  or  shore.  Scott  loved  to  picture  the  past, 
but  his  was  the  past  of  the  poet's  fancy  ;  not  the  hard, 
grim  world,  where  men  struggled  with  existence  and 
for  it,  but  an  idealized  arena,  where  noble  birth  meant 
noble  being  ;  and  only  a  villain  or  a  hypocrite  could 
lift  a  hand,  even  for  freedom,  against  a  head  that  was 
crowned.    In  this  use  of  the  imagination  there  was 


296 


CATHOLICISM 


more  truth,  but  less  reality,  than  there  had  been  in  the 
cold  and  analytic  methods  of  the  previous  century. 
Rationalism,  for  want  of  the  historical  imagination, 
sacrificed  the  past  to  theory.  Romanticism,  for  want 
of  the  critical  faculty,  sacrificed  history  to  the  past. 
What  one  finds  in  the  elegant  yet  careless  pages  of 
Hume,  is  a  record  of  events  that  once  happened, 
written  by  a  man  who  has  never  conceived  so  as  to 
realize  the  events  he  describes  ;  what  one  finds  in  the 
vivid  pages  of  Scott  is  a  living  picture  of  the  past, 
but  of  a  past  that  had  never  lived.  This  is  the  very 
essence  of  Romanticism,  the  imaginative  interpreta- 
tion of  nature  or  history  :  but  it  is  only  the  form 
that  is  natural  or  historical,  the  substance  or  spirit  is 
altogether  the  interpreter's  own. 

§  II.    The  Makers  of  the  Revival 

1.  Now  it  was  this  Romanticist  tendency  that  was 
the  positive  factor  of  Anglo-Catholicism.  While  the 
other  two  sets  of  circumstances  supplied  respectively 
the  occasion  and  the  opportunity,  this  gave  the  crea- 
tive impulse ;  it  was  the  spirit  that  quickened.  The 
men  in  whom  it  took  shape  and  found  speech  were 
three — Keble,  Newman,  Pusey.  Perhaps  we  ought 
to  name  a  fourth,  Hurrell  Froude ;  but  he  lives  in 
Newman.  He  was  the  swiftest,  most  daring  spirit  of 
them  all ;  his  thought  is  hot,  as  it  were,  with  the 
fever  that  shortened  his  days  ;  his  words  are  suffused 
as  with  a  hectic  flush,  and  we  must  judge  him  rather 
as  one  who  moved  men  to  achieve  than  by  his  own 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  297 


actual  achievements.  The  three  we  have  named  were 
in  a  rare  degree  complementary  of  each  other ;  they 
were  respectively  poet,  thinker,  and  scholar,  and  each 
contributed  to  the  movement  according  to  his  kind. 
Keble  was  a  splendid  instance  of  the  truth  that  a 
man  who  makes  the  songs  of  a  people  does  more 
than  the  man  who  makes  their  laws.  His  hymns  are 
a  perfect  lyric  expression  of  the  Romanticist  ten- 
dency ;  in  them  the  mood  of  the  moment  speaks  its 
devoutest  feelings  in  fittest  form.  This  was  the 
secret  of  their  power.  They  are  without  the  passion 
of  the  mystic,  the  infinite  hunger  of  the  soul  that 
would  live  for  God,  after  the  God  it  cannot  live 
without,  the  desire  to  transcend  all  media,  win  the 
immediate  divine  vision,  and  lose  self  in  its  supreme 
bliss  ;  rather  are  they  the  sweet  and  mellow  fruit  of 
"  pious  meditation  fancy-fed,"  which  loves  means  as 
means,  feels  joy  in  their  use,  in  reading  their  mean- 
ing, in  being  subdued  by  their  gentle  discipline  ;  and 
which  loves  God  all  the  better  for  the  seemliness  and 
stateliness  of  the  way  we  get  to  Him.  Keble  learned 
of  Wordsworth  to  love  nature,  to  read  it  as  a  veiled 
parable,  or  embodied  allegory,  spoken  by  God  and 
heard  by  the  soul  ;  he  learned  of  Scott  to  love  the 
past,  and  seek  in  it  his  ideals.  His  love  of  God 
became  love  of  his  own  church,  of  what  she  had 
been,  what  she  was,  and,  above  all,  of  what  she  ought 
to  be ;  of  her  ancient  monuments,  her  venerable  in- 
stitutions, her  stately  ceremonial,  her  saints  and  her 
saints'  days.    And  by  his  sweet,  meditative,  poetic 


298 


CATHOLICISM 


gift  he  made  what  he  loved  seem  lovely.  What 
ecclesiastical  polemics,  parochial  activity,  and  sacer- 
dotal ritual  never  could  have  accomplished,  his  hymns 
achieved  ;  indeed,  they  not  only  made  those  others 
possible,  but  even  necessary,  creating  for  them  that 
disposition,  that  readiness  to  receive,  to  learn,  and  to 
trust,  which  is,  according  to  Newman,  the  greater 
part  of  faith.  It  is  by  sure  instinct  that  the  name  of 
Keble  has  been  seized  as  the  name  most  typical  of 
the  Anglo-Catholic  revival.  He  caught  the  prevailing 
sentiment,  and  translated  it  into  a  form  at  once  poetic 
and  religious ;  and  by  so  doing  he  turned  a  rising  tide 
or  tendency  into  the  service  of  his  party  and  his  church. 
But  the  secret  of  his  strength  may  become  the  source 
of  their  weakness.  The  man  of  pious  and  meditative 
fancy  may  evoke  the  historical  spirit,  and  make  the 
present  beautiful  in  the  light  of  an  idealized  past ; 
but  when  the  appeal  is  to  history,  scientific  criticism 
becomes  the  ultimate  judge,  and,  though  its  judg- 
ments are  slow,  they  are  inexorable  as  those  of  God. 

2.  Newman  was  more  rarely  gifted  than  Keble,  but 
his  gifts,  though  of  a  rarer  and  higher  order,  were  less 
pure  in  quality.  He  had  in  a  far  higher  degree  the 
poet's  temper,  and  more  of  his  insight,  creative  genius 
and  passion.  It  was  his  misfortune  to  be  an  ecclesi- 
astic in  a  stormy  crisis,  and  indeed  to  be  of  the  crisis 
the  foremost  and  characteristic  polemic.  He  had  a 
subtle  and  analytic  intellect ;  but  dialectical  rather 
than  speculative,  discursive  and  critical  rather  than 
synthetic  and  constructive.     He  had  more  of  the 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  299 


mystic's  nature  and  intensity  than  Keble ;  the 
passion  for  God  burned  in  his  spirit  like  a  fire,  im- 
pelled him  as  by  an  awful  necessity  to  the  Infinite, 
yet  divided  him  from  it  by  a  still  more  awful  dis- 
tance. He  loved  to  seek  everywhere  for  symbols  of 
the  divine,  which  would  at  once  assure  him  of  the 
Eternal  Presence,  and  help  him  to  gain  more  con- 
scious access  to  it ;  yet  he  had  the  genuine  mystic's 
feeling  that  all  means  were  inadequate,  and  so 
divisive  ;  as  mediative  they  held  the  spirit  out  of 
the  immediate  Presence,  and  not  only  shaded  but 
obscured  its  glory.  Hence  he  had  none  of  Keble's 
love  of  means  as  means ;  he  had  too  much  imagina- 
tion to  be  satisfied  with  the  sensuous  seemliness,  the 
Laudian  "  beauty  of  holiness,"  which  pleased  Keble's 
fine  and  fastidious,  but  feebler  fancy  ;  what  he  wanted 
was  to  stand  face  to  face  with  God  himself,  and  to 
find  a  way  to  Him  as  sure  as  his  own  need  for  Him 
was  deep  and  real.  But  to  find  such  a  way,  never  an 
easy  thing,  was  to  one  situated  and  constituted  like 
Newman  peculiarly  hard.  For  as  deep  and  ineradi- 
cable as  his  passion  for  God  was  his  scepticism  of 
reason,  which  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  subtlest  of 
all  scepticisms  as  to  God.1    And  it  is  the  least  toler- 


1  This  interpretation  of  Newman  is  admirably  illustrated  by 
Mr.  Hutton,  Modem  Guides  of  English  Thought  in  Matters  of 
Faith,  pp.  78  ff.  The  conclusion  was  not  intended,  but  is  only 
on  that  account  the  more  significant.  "  It  is,  I  think,  profound 
pity  for  the  restlessness  and  insatiability  of  human  reason 
which  has  made  him  a  Roman  Catholic/'   But  the  "pity''  is 


300 


CATHOLICISM 


able,  because  the  most  paralysing,  to  the.  man  with 
the  spirit  and  temper  of  the  mystic.  To  believe  in 
God,  yet  to  doubt  His  real  presence  in  the  reason,  is 
to  be  impelled  to  imagine  that  what  in  man  has  most 
of  God  is  also  remotest  from  Him,  and  most  com- 
pletely out  of  His  control ;  and  so  the  inexorable 
logic  of  the  situation  forces  the  man,  if  he  does  not 
surrender  his  doubt  of  the  reason,  either  to  surrender 
all  certainty  and  all  reality  in  his  knowledge  of  God, 
or  to  end  the  conflict  by  calling  in  some  violent 
mechanical  expedient,  such  indeed  as  Newman  was 
slowly  but  irresistibly  driven  to  adopt.  Whence  this 
sceptical  tendency  came  in  Newman's  case  is  a 
question  we  have  already  in  part  discussed  ;  but 
here  we  may  say  he  owed  it,  partly,  perhaps  mainly, 
to  native  intellectual  qualities,  partly,  to  his  place  in 
the  reaction  against  Rationalism,  and,  partly,  to  an 
author  he  greatly  loves  to  praise,  who  possibly  repre- 
sents the  greatest  mental  influence  he  came  under, 
Butler.  The  reaction  against  Rationalism  was  in 
Newman  more  a  matter  of  imagination  than  of 
reason  ;  and  he  hated  and  disowned  its  results  with- 
out transcending  its  philosophy.  As  a  consequence, 
he  shared  in  the  common  inheritance  of  our  modern 
English  thought,  that  doubt  of  the  reason  which  has 
become  in  the  more  consistent  philosophies  either  a 
reasoned  doubt,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing  adapted 

only  the  superficial  expression  of  the  deeper  scepticism,  which 
so  doubts  "  God's  Spirit  as  revealed  in  conscience  and  reason," 
as  to  require  an  infallible  institution  for  their  control. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  3OI 


to  a  positive  and  scientific  age,  a  reasoned  nescience. 
And  to  the  difficulties  or  antinomies  of  his  thought 
Butler  more  than  any  man  awoke  him.  The  under- 
lying or  material  idea  of  the  Analogy,  what  may 
be  termed  the  theory  of  the  correspendence  of  the 
physical  and  spiritual  realms,  especially  when  further 
qualified  by  the  influence  of  Keble,  gave  indeed  to 
Newman  his  grand  constructive  principle,  the  notion 
of  the  sacramental  symbolism  of  Nature  ;  but  its 
formal  and  regulative  maxim,  "  Probability  is  the 
guide  of  life,"  was  more  creative  of  disturbance  and 
perplexity.  For  to  a  man  of  his  temper,  mental 
integrity,  and  theistic  passion,  as  sure  of  God's  being 
as  of  his  own,  it  must  have  seemed  a  sort  of  irony  to 
make  such  a  maxim  the  judicial  and  determinative 
principle  in  a  religious  argument.  It  may  be  said 
to  have  formulated  his  master  problem — How  is  it 
possible  to  build  on  probable  evidence  the  certitude 
of  faith  ?  or,  How,  by  a  method  of  probabilities,  can 
the  existence,  if  not  of  necessary,  yet  of  infallible 
truth,  be  proved?  Indeed,  Butler's  probability,  which 
was  not  without  similar  tendencies  in  his  own  case, 
determined  the  search  which  landed  Newman  in 
Papal  infallibility. 

We  have,  then,  to  imagine  Newman,  with  his  mystic 
passion,  his  philosophical  scepticism,  and  his  apolo- 
getical  maxim,  called  to  face  the  disintegrative  and 
aggressive  forces  of  his  time.  He  could  face  them  in 
strength  only  by  maintaining  his  intellectual  integrity  ; 
and  from  the  antinomies  of  his  thought  there  were 


302 


CATHOLICISM 


only  two  possible  ways  of  escape,  either  by  a  higher 
philosophy  or  a  higher  authority.  And  of  these  two 
each  was  exclusive  of  the  other.  If  the  way  by 
philosophy  had  been  chosen,  then  the  process  of  re- 
conciliation would  have  been  immanent  and  natural ; 
the  antitheses  of  the  formal  understanding  would  have 
been  overcome  by  the  synthesis  of  the  transcendental 
reason.  But  to  choose  the  way  of  authority  was  to 
deny  that  any  natural  process  of  reconciliation  was 
possible,  and  to  seek  to  silence  the  inward  dissonances 
by  the  sound  of  an  outward  voice ;  and,  of  course, 
the  deeper  the  dissonances  grew,  the  more  authorita- 
tive had  the  voice  to  be  made.  For  many  reasons — 
constitutional,  educational,  circumstantial,  social — the 
philosophical  way  was  not  selected  ;  and  Newman  be- 
gan his  wonderful  polemical  career  a  mystic  in  faith, 
a  sceptic  in  philosophy,  a  seeker  after  an  authority 
able  to  subdue  the  scepticism  and  vindicate  the  faith. 
His  power,  studied  in  connection  with  his  marvellous 
literary  faculty  and  intense  religious  sincerity,  is  ex- 
plicable enough ;  but,  regarded  as  a  question  in  philo- 
sophical criticism,  it  is  more  complex  and  difficult  of 
analysis.  No  man  has  more  thoroughly  understood 
the  men  of  his  age ;  no  man  of  genius  ever  less  com- 
prehended the  problems  of  his  time,  or  contributed 
less  to  their  solution.  It  is  remarkable,  considering 
his  immense  productivity,  and  the  range  and  kind  of 
subjects  he  has  handled,  how  few  constructive  princi- 
ples, speculative  and  historical,  can  be  found  in  his 
works.    The  critical  philosophy  he  does  not  seem  to 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  303 


have  cared  to  understand.  Modern  criticism,  as  re- 
gards both  principles  and  methods,  he  never  tried  to 
master,  or  even,  objectively,  to  conceive.  The  scien- 
tific treatment  of  history  is  too  alien  to  his  spirit  and 
aims  to  be  comprehended  by  him.  His  one  consider- 
able historical  work  1  is  but  an  overgrown  polemical 
pamphlet — a  treatise  on  the  controversies  of  his  own 
times  disguised  as  a  history.  His  Doctrine  of  Develop' 
ment~  is  not  original ;  and  its  thesis,  so  far  from  being 
the  equivalent  of  evolution,  is  its  antithesis  and  con- 
tradiction. It  may  be  logic  applied  to  dogma,  but  is 
not  science  applied  to  history.  His  most  consider- 
able, at  once  philosophical  and  apologetical  work,3 
may  be  described  as  a  treatise  on  the  necessity  of  the 
personal  equation  in  religion :  it  ignores  what  is 
primary  and  universal  in  the  reason,  that  it  may  build 
on  what  is  specific  and  acquired  in  the  individual. 
But  it  is  no  paradox  to  say,  those  very  elements  of 
his  philosophical  weakness  have  been  sources  of  his 
literary  and  controversial  strength.  The  very  severity 
of  the  conflict  in  his  own  spirit  has  given  him  the 
profoundest  sense  of  any  thinker  in  our  day  of  the 
perplexities  of  living  man  —  the  bewilderments  of 
thought,  motive,  and  conscience  that  come  of  limited 
and  passionful  being,  bound  by  law  yet  in  revolt 
against  the  law  that  binds  it.  Convictions  the  more 
strenuous  that  they  were  formulated  in  conflict  and 

1  The  Avians  of  the  Fourth  Century  ( 1 833). 

'  An  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine  (1845). 

3  The  Grammar  of  Assent  (1870). 


304 


CA  THOLICISM 


have  been  held  amid  controversies,  internal  and  ex- 
ternal ;  a  piety  that  is  nothing  less  than  a  genius  for 
religion  ;  an  intense  imagination,  using  the  instruments 
of  subtle  dialectic,  and  clothing  argument  in  speech 
of  wondrous  grace  and  force,  have  enabled  him  to 
address  with  unequalled,  often  irresistible,  power,  men 
who  could  be  reached  most  easily  through  the  con- 
science or  imagination.  Such  men  he  has  awed,  sub- 
dued, converted,  though  by  a  process  that  silenced  or 
overpowered  rather  than  convinced  the  reason.  And 
the  process  he  has  pursued  without,  is  but  the  counter- 
part of  the  process  he  had  before  pursued  within. 
Truth  has  never  been  to  him  so  much  an  object  for 
quest  or  question  as  for  acceptance.  Intellectual 
difference  has  been  a  sort  of  moral  offence,  and  he 
has  reasoned  as  if  the  men  who  held  the  principles 
he  hated  must  themselves  be  odious.  Hence  came 
what  Blanco  White  called  his  "  deceiving  pride,"  and 
his  resolute  sacrifice  of  old  friends  to  new  views. 
Hence,  too,  the  temper  I  will  not  call  intolerant,  but 
so  severely  and  logically  authoritative  that,  to  quote 
Blanco  White  again,  "  he  would,  as  sure  as  he  lives, 
persecute  to  the  death,  if  he  had  the  direction  of  the 
civil  power  for  a  dozen  years."  These  are  the  invari- 
able characteristics  of  the  man  who  bases  a  faith  of 
authority  on  a  scepticism  of  the  reason.  Newman, 
with  all  that  he  stands  for,  represents  the  struggle  of 
English  empiricism  to  remain  empirical,  and  yet  be- 
come imaginative  and  religious. 

3.  But  the  scholar  of  the  band  was  as  notable  in 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  305 


his  own  order  as  the  poet  and  thinker  were  in  theirs. 
Pusey,  indeed,  was  less  a  scholar  than  a  schoolman, 
these  two  being  distinguishable  thus :  the  scholar 
loves  learning,  and  uses  it  as  an  instrument  for  the 
discovery  of  truth,  while  the  schoolman  is  a  learned 
man  who  uses  his  learning  as  a  means  of  proving  an 
assumed  or  formulated  position.  The  scholar  studies 
that  he  may  cultivate  mind,  develop  and  exercise  the 
humanities  :  but  the  schoolman  searches  that  he  may 
find  authorities  to  verify  his  axioms  and  justify  his 
definitions.  The  scholar  aims  at  objectivity,  seeing 
things  as  they  really  were,  how  and  why  they  hap- 
pened, whither  tended,  and  what  achieved  ;  but  the 
schoolman  is  throughout  governed  by  subjectivity, 
brings  his  system  to  history,  and  pursues  his  re- 
searches that  history  may  be  made  to  furnish  evidence 
of  the  system  he  brings.  Now  Pusey  had  the  mak- 
ing of  a  scholar  in  him,  though  he  never  became  what 
he  could  have  been.  He  had  a  susceptible,  sym- 
pathetic,'assimilative  mind,  combined  with  a  certain 
largeness  of  nature  that  at  once  qualified  him  to  un- 
derstand man  and  distinguished  him  as  a  man  men 
could  trust.  His  famous  Inquiry  into  the  Probable 
Causes  of  German  Rationalism  admirably  illustrates 
his  mental  qualities,  especially  the  susceptible  and 
assimilative.  It  is  full  of  his  German  teachers,1  their 
spirit,  method,  materials,  though  all  has  passed  through 

1  For  what  the  Inquiry  owed  to  Tholuck,  and  his  judgment 
on  the  use  made  of  his  material,  see  Witte's  Das  Leben  Tholuck's, 
vol.  ii.,  pp.  242,  243. 

20 


306 


a  conservative  English  mind,  wise  and  honest  enough 
to  defend  a  cause  by  being  just  to  the  cause  it  opposed. 
But  in  Oxford,  Keble  and  Newman  superseded  Tho- 
luck,  and  Pusey  passed  from  the  scientific  to  a  local 
and  insular  standpoint,  the  scholar  became  the  school- 
man. What  he  was  to  the  new  movement  Newman 
has  testified ;  he  brought  to  it  the  dignity  of  high 
academic  office  and  social  rank,  weight  of  character, 
counsel,  judicial  faculty  and  speech,  the  sen-ice  of 
vast  erudition,  and  reverence  for  the  sources  his  erudi- 
tion explored.  He  had  precisely  the  qualities  most 
needed  to  consolidate  and  guide  the  party.  Keble's 
fancy  had  idealized  the  church  and  its  past,  had 
made  its  worship  poetical,  had  touched  its  services 
with  fine  and  well-ordered  emotion.  Newman's  genius 
had  filled  the  church  with  new  meaning  and  new 
ideals,  his  eloquence  had  pealed  through  it  like  the 
notes  of  a  mighty  organ  waking  long  silent  echoes, 
and  had  kindled  in  men  a  new  enthusiasm  for  their 
transfigured  church.  And  now  Pusey's  erudition  came 
to  search  the  Fathers  and  the  Anglican  divines  for 
evidence  that  the  new  was  the  old,  and  based  on 
venerable  and  invariable  tradition.  Keble  was  loved, 
Newman  admired,  but  Pusey  trusted.  Keble  moved 
in  an  atmosphere  of  reverence  and  emotion  ;  difference 
in  his  case  did  not  breed  dislike ;  the  very  men  who 
most  disagreed  with  his  theology  were  most  subdued 
by  his  hymns.  Newman  was  even  more  feared  than 
admired  ;  the  men  who  followed  doubted,  uncertain 
whither  he  might  lead  ;  the  men  who  resisted  disliked, 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  307 

certain  that  he  tended  with  increasing  momentum 
whither  they  did  not  mean  to  go.  But  Pusey  had 
Newman's  strength  of  conviction  without  his  danger- 
ous genius  ;  he  was  conservative  not  because  sceptical, 
but  because  convinced ;  he  loved  his  church  in  the 
concrete,  and  he  lived  to  prove  that  she  embodied  the 
"  quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  ab  omnibus  credi- 
tum  est."  On  any  dubious  or  questioned  point  he 
was  ready  to  bring  determinative  evidence  from  his 
recondite  lore  ;  on  any  critical  occasion  he  was  no 
less  ready  to  use  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  as  a  plat- 
form for  the  issue  of  a  manifesto.  And  so  the  move- 
ment others  created,  Pusey  controlled ;  and  in  his 
hands  its  character  became  fixed  as  a  creation  or 
Renaissance  of  Romanticism  conditioned  and  tem- 
pered by  scholasticism. 


1.  To  these  men,  then,  the  progress  of  events  in 
literature  and  philosophy  on  the  one  hand,  and  in 
Church  and  State  on  the  other,  combined  to  set  the 
problem :  How  can  the  Church  be  rescued  from  the 
hands  of  a  State  penetrated  and  commanded  by 
"  Liberalism,"  and  be  elevated  into  an  authority  able 
to  regulate  faith  and  conscience,  to  control  reason 
and  society  ?  What  Newman  named  "  Liberalism  "  was 
a  single  force  disguised  in  many  forms,  rationalism 
in  religion,  revolution  or  reform  in  politics,  Eras- 
tianism  and  latitudinarianism  in  church.  It  was  the 
spirit  of  change,  negation,  disintegration,  destruction. 


§111.    The  Ayiglo-Catholic  Theory 


308 


CA  THOLICISM 


The  church  must  destroy  it,  or  it  would  destroy  the 
church,  and  with  it  faith  in  God,  godliness,  religion. 
To  save  the  church,  two  things  were  necessary — to 
invest  it  with  divine  authority  and  all  the  rights 
flowing  from  it ;  and  to  set  it  strong  in  its  authority 
and  rights  over  against  the  apostate  State  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  rebellious  reason  on  the  other. 
With  sure  instinct  the  New  Anglicans  began  by 
assailing  the  Reformation.  The  Puritans  had  dis- 
approved and  opposed  the  royal  authority,  because 
it  arrested  and  restrained  the  Reformation  ;  but  the 
Anglican  hated  the  Reformation,  because  it  had  been 
effected  by  the  royal  authority.  In  the  old  days, 
when  the  king  reigned  by  the  grace  of  God  and 
through  the  zealous  spirits  of  the  Episcopal  bench, 
the  Anglican  had  loved  the  royal  supremacy,  and 
soundly  punished  the  Puritan  for  denying  it :  but 
when,  in  the  process  of  constitutional  change,  the 
royal  supremacy  became  only  the  form  or  mask  of 
parliamentary  power  and  control,  which  in  its  turn 
was  but  the  instrument  of  the  hated  "  Liberalism," 
— then  the  Anglican  became  as  convinced  as  the 
Puritan  of  the  excellence  of  independency.1  The 

1  It  is  instructive  to  see  how  similar  ideas  under  similar  con- 
ditions demand  for  their  expression  similar  terms.  Thus  the 
earliest  treatise  from  the  High  Church  point  of  view  on  this 
subject  is  Charles  Leslie's  ;  the  title  runs  :  "  The  case  of  the 
Regale  and  of  the  Pontificate  stated,  in  a  Conference  concern- 
ing the  Independency  of  the  Church  upon  any  power  on  earth, 
in  the  exercise  of  her  purely  Spiritual  power  and  authority." 
This  exactly  reproduces  the  very  idea,  in  what  is  almost  exactly 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  309 


secular  arm  in  touching  had  wronged  the  church  ; 
and  while  the  men  who  did  it,  and  those  who  suffered 
it  to  be  done,  were  alike  reproached,  she  was  pic- 
tured as  the  gracious  mother  of  peoples,  with  her 
heroic  yet  saintly  sons,  and   clinging   yet  stately 
daughters  about  her,  creating  literature,  civilization, 
art,  and   whatever  made  life   rich   and  beautiful, 
and  remaining   benignant,  though   forlorn,  in  the 
midst  of  a  greedy  and  graceless  posterity,  blind  to 
her  beauty,  and  forgetful  of  her  beneficence.  But 
Newman  touched  a  higher  strain  ;  his  genius  scorned 
to  ask  aid   from  sentiment ;   he  called  upon  the 
church  to  become  militant  and  equip  herself  in  the 
armour  of  her  divine  attributes.    The  State  might 
suppress  bishoprics,  but  bishops  were  independent  of 
the  State ;  they  were  before  it,  existed  by  a  higher 
right,  were  of  apostolical  descent  and  authority,  stood 
in  a  divine  order  which  the  State  had  not  made  and 
could  not  unmake.     And  as  with  the  bishops,  so 
with  the  clergy  ;  their  orders  were  sacred,  inalienable, 
instituted  of  God,  and  upheld  by  Him.    And  their 
functions  corresponded  to  their  authority ;  to  them 
had  been  committed  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  ;  they 
could  bind  and  loose,  and  were  by  their  commission 
empowered  to  act  in  their  Master's  name.    In  their 


their  own  phraseology,  as  to  the  relation  of  Church  and  State 
held  by  those  who  were  the  ancestors  of  the  later  "  Indepen- 
dents." Indeed,  the  Anglican  "autonomy  of  the  Church  "is 
but  the  Puritan  independency,  or  rather  a  single  aspect  of  it, 
and  the  Presbyterian  "  Crown  rights  of  the  Redeemer." 


3io 


CATHOLICISM 


hands  too,  and  in  theirs  only,  were  the  sacraments, 
and  "  the  sacraments,  not  preaching,  are  the  sources 
of  divine  grace."  The  sacred  order  was  the  condi- 
tion of  the  church's  being,  and  the  factor  of  its 
efficiency  ;  where  the  authorized  priest  was  not,  the 
sacraments  could  not  be ;  and  no  sacraments  meant 
no  church,  no  life  communicated  by  Baptism  and 
maintained  by  the  Eucharist.  And  the  church 
which  ministered  life  by  her  sacraments,  guarded, 
defined,  and  interpreted  truth  by  her  authority ;  for 
to  the  being  and  belief  of  the  truth,  an  authoritative 
interpreter  was  even  more  necessary  than  an  in- 
spired source.  And  this  was  to  be  found  in  tradition, 
not  indeed  as  collected  and  preserved  by  Rome,  but 
as  contained  in  the  Fathers,  and  as  gathered  from 
them  by  Anglican  scholars  and  divines.  Rome  was 
corrupt,  but  catholic ;  the  Protestant  churches  were 
corrupt  and  sectarian  ;  but  the  church  of  the  Fathers 
was  catholic  and  pure ;  and  after  it  the  Anglican 
was  fashioned,  and  tried  to  walk  in  its  light  and  read 
the  truth  with  its  eyes.  And  so  a  proud,  coherent, 
and  courageous  theory  of  the  Church  stood  up  to 
confront  and  dare  the  State ;  to  rebuke  it  as  of  the 
earth,  to  speak  to  it  as  with  the  voice  of  heaven,  to 
command  it  to  revere  and  obey  where  it  had  thought 
it  could  compel  and  rule. 

2.  It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  criticize  the 
Anglican  theory ;  it  was  the  work  of  men  who  made 
an  impassioned  appeal  to  history,  but  were  utterly 
void  of  the  historical  spirit.    The  past  they  loved 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  311 


and  studied  was  a  past  of  detached  fragments,  violent 
divisions,  broken  and  delimited  in  the  most  arbitrary- 
way.  Their  canon,  "  quod  semper,  quod  ubiquc, 
quod  ab  omnibus  creditum  est,"  they  honoured  in 
speech  rather  than  observance  ;  the  "  semper "  did 
not  mean  "  always,"  or  the  "  ubique "  everywhere, 
or  the  "  ab  omnibus  "  by  all  ;  but  only  such  times, 
places  and  men,  or  even  such  parts  and  sections  of 
times,  places  and  men,  as  could  be  made  to  suit  or 
prove  the  theory.  Then,  for  an  authority  to  be  of 
any  use  in  the  region  of  truth,  it  must  be  authori- 
tative, accessible,  self-consistent  and  explicit ;  but 
this  authority  was  not  one  of  these  things — it  was 
only  the  voice  of  these  very  simple,  very  positive, 
unscientific,  and  often  mistaken  men.  Their  supreme 
difficult}',  which  broke  down  the  transcendent  genius 
of  the  party,  was  to  get  their  own  church  to  speak 
their  mind  ;  and  they  were  even  less  successful  with 
the  Fathers  than  with  their  church.  There  is  no 
more  splendid  example  anywhere  of  how  completely 
a  professedly  historical  movement  can  be  indepen- 
dent of  historical  truth.  The  Tractarians  in  this 
respect  present  a  remarkable  contrast  to  the  Re- 
formers. Calvin  in  his  treatment  of  doctrine  was 
nothing  if  not  historical  ;  the  Tractarians  in  their 
treatment  of  history  were  nothing  if  not  dogmatic. 
They  were  traditional  but  not  historical,  while  the 
Reformers  were  historical  but  not  traditional.  The 
Reformers  courageously,  if  not  always  thoroughly, 
rejected   tradition   and   authority  that  they  might 


312 


CA  THOLICISM 


reach  the  mind  and  realize  the  ideal  of  the  Christ 
of  history  ;  but  the  Tractarians,  with  no  less  courage, 
tried  to  adapt  the  historical  mind  and  bend  the 
historical  ideal  to  authority  and  tradition.  Truth  is 
patient,  and  suffers  much  at  the  hands  of  sincere 
men  ;  but  she  always  comes  by  her  own  at  last. 

§  IV.    The  Anglo-Catholics  and  Literature 

i.  What  has  been  the  result  of  the  Anglo-Catholic 
revival?  If  the  success  of  a  religious  movement  is 
to  be  measured  by  its  power  to  penetrate  with  its 
own  spirit,  to  persuade  and  reconcile  to  religion  the 
best  intellects  of  a  country,  then  even  its  most 
devoted  advocates  can  hardly  say  that  Anglo-Catholi- 
cism has  succeeded.  While  at  first  championed  by 
the  greatest  literary  genius  and  master  of  dialectic 
who  has  in  this  century  concerned  himself  with 
theology,  it  is  marvellous  how  little  it  has  touched 
our  characteristic  and  creative  minds ;  with  these 
neither  Roman  nor  Anglican  Catholicism  has  ac- 
complished anything.  Take  the  poets,  who  alike 
as  regards  period  and  place  ought  to  have  been  most 
accessible  and  susceptible  to  the  Catholic  spirit  and 
influence.  Arthur  Hugh  Clough  was  educated  at 
Balliol,  and  elected  to  a  Fellowship  at  Oriel  in  the 
days  when  Newman  reigned  in  St.  Mary's ;  and  he 
is  considered  by  the  most  competent  of  our  critics 
to  be  "  the  truest  expression  in  verse  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  tendencies  of  the  period  in  which  he 
lived."    He  is  fascinated  by  Newman  and  held  by 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD  AND  NEW 


313 


him  for  a  while,  but  only  that  he  may  learn  how 
little  there  is  behind  the  subtle  and  persuasive  elo- 
quence to  satisfy  a  mind  possessed  with  the  passion 
for  veracity ;  and  he  is  driven  by  the  recoil  into  the 
anxious  uncertainties  where  "  the  music  of  his  rustic 
lute  "  lost  "  its  happy  country  tone," 

"And  learnt  a  stormy  note 
Of  men  contention-tost,  of  men  who  groan." 

Matthew  Arnold,  son  of  a  father  who  made  Eng- 
land love  breadth  of  view  and  truth  in  history, 
studied,  learned,  and  suffered  with  the  Thyrsis  he  so 
deeply  yet  so  sweetly  mourned  ;  like  him  he  became 
a  poet,  jealous  of  truth  in  thought  and  word,  and 
like  him,  too,  faced  the  problem  and  the  men  of  the 
hour ;  but  he  did  not  dare  to  trust  as  guides  for  the 
present  men  too  credulous  of  the  past  to  read  its 
truths  aright.  Too  well  he  learned  the  bitter  moral 
of  all  their  arguing,  and  concluded  :  "  If  authority  be 
necessary  to  faith,  then  an  impossible  authority 
makes  faith  impossible  "  ;  and  he  turned  from  Oxford 
to  learn  of  Weimar — 

"  The  end  is  everywhere, 
Art  still  has  truth,  take  refuge  there." 

William  Morris,  formed  in  the  Oxford  of  a  later 
day,  when  in  the  calm  that  follows  conflict  Anglo- 
Catholicism  reigned,  could  find  in  it  no  satisfying 
veracious  ideal  of  truth,  of  art  or  of  life ;  and  he  went 
instead  to  the  wild  Scandinavian  and  distant  Greek 
mythologies  for  the  forms  in  which  to  impersonate 


314 


CA  THOLICISM 


his  faith  and  hope.  Swinburne,  who  had  the  hot 
imagination  that  easily  kindled  to  noble  dreams  of 
liberty  and  human  good,  could  find  no  promise  in 
the  crimson  sunset  glories  which  Anglo-Catholicism 
loved  ;  and  he  turned  passionately  towards  what 
seemed  to  him  the  east  and  the  sunrise.  But  it  was 
not  only  those  younger  sons  of  Oxford  who  had  in 
a  measure  "  the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine,"  that 
the  new  Catholicism  failed  to  touch ;  it  touched  as 
little  the  maturer  and  richer  imaginations  of  the  two 
men  who  will  ever  remain  the  representative  poets 
of  the  Victorian  era.  Tennyson  has  been  essentially 
a  religious  genius  ;  the  doubts,  the  fears,  the  thought 
perplexed  by  evil,  by  suffering,  by  a  nature  cruel  in 
her  very  harmonies,  by  the  presence  of  wicked  men 
and  the  distance  of  a  helpful  God,  the  faith  victorious 
in  the  very  face  of  sin  and  death,  certain  that  some- 
how "good  will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill,"  have  all 
received  from  him  rich  and  musical  expression.  But 
his  ideals  are  not  those  of  mediaeval  or  modern 
Catholicism  ;  they  may  be  clothed  in  forms  borrowed 
from  a  far-off  world  of  mythical  chivalry ;  but  it  is 
not  a  priest's  world  ;  it  is  one  of  men  all  the  more 
saintly  that  they  are  kings,  warriors,  statesmen,  a 
world  of  fair  women  and  goodly  men.  Browning, 
who  was  as  essentially  a  religious  poet  as  Tennyson, 
and  indeed,  though  no  writer  of  hymns,  as  a  poet 
more  profoundly,  penetratively,  and  comprehensively 
religious  than  Keble,  bears  throughout  in  his  sym- 
pathies— in  his  love  of  liberty,  in  his  hopeful  trust  in 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD  AND  NEW  315 


man,  in  his  belief  in  God  as  the  All-loving  as  well 
as  the  All-great,  who  through  the  thunder  speaks  with 
human  voice — the  marks  and  fruits  of  his  Puritan 
birth  and  breeding.  But  the  sensuous  seemliness  of 
Anglo-Catholicism  had  no  charms  for  him  ;  it  had 
too  little  spiritual  sublimity,  stood  too  remote  from 
the  heart  of  things,  had  too  little  fellowship  with  the 
whole  truth  of  God,  and  all  the  infinite  needs  and 
aspirations  of  man.  He  had  seen,  too,  the  outwork- 
ing of  its  ideas ;  had  studied  their  action  and 
character  in  history  ;  and  his  curious  lore  and  large 
experience  helped  him  to  many  a  fit  yet  quaint 
form  in  which  to  embody  what  he  had  discovered 
or  observed.  Browning  more  than  any  man  has 
deepened  the  faith  of  our  age  in  the  Eternal ;  but 
he  has  also,  more  than  any  man,  made  us  conscious 
of  the  evil  of  fancying  that  we  can  transmute  our 
ephemeral  polities  and  shallow  symbols  into  the 
infallible  and  unchangeable  speech  of  God. 

2.  This  failure  of  Anglo-Catholicism  to  touch  our 
higher  literature  is  both  remarkable  and  instructive. 
It  has  had  and  has  its  minor  poets,  a  goodly 
multitude  ;  but  even  their  poetry  has  been  mainly 
reminiscent  and  sentimental,  not  spontaneous  and 
imaginative.  Indeed,  this  has  been  its  characteristic 
in  all  periods  of  its  being  ;  writers  of  hymns,  quaint, 
devout,  beautiful,  melodious,  it  has  always  had,  but 
never  poets  of  the  imagination  ;  if  it  has  ever  taken 
possession  of  such,  it  has  paralyzed  the  poet  in  them, 
as  witness  Wordsworth  and  his  ecclesiastical  sonnets. 


3i6 


CA  THOLICISM 


In   this    stands   expressed   some   of  its  essential 
characteristics.   Within  the  rich  and  complicated  and 
splendidly  dight  folds  of  the  Spenserian  allegories, 
there  lives  much  of  the  brawny  Puritan  mind  and 
purpose.    The  same  mind,  and  the  faith  it  lived 
by,  made  the  noblest  epic  and  the   most  perfect 
classical  drama  in  the  speech  of  our  English  people. 
No  man  will  claim  John  Dryden  as  a  religious  poet, 
though  he  forced  poetry  into  the  ignoble  strife  of 
ecclesiastical  politics,  and  made  it  the  mean  apologist 
of  royal  and  papal  designs.    Deism  lisped  in  num- 
bers through  the  lips  of  Catholic  Pope ;  and  the 
Evangelical  Revival   inspired   the   gentle   soul  of 
Cowper  to  verse,  always  genial  and  graceful,  and 
often  gay.    But  Anglo-Catholic  poetry,  measured  by 
the  Puritan,  is  remarkable  for  nothing  so  much  as 
its  imaginative   poverty,  its   inability  to   create  a 
literature  that   shall  adequately  embody  the  true 
and  the  sublime.    And  this  has  its  parallel  in  the 
theology  of  the   past   half-century.     Newman,  of 
course,  stands  alone — Catholic  still,  but  Anglican 
no  more.    Apart  from  him,  what  names  represent 
the  most  potent  forces  in  theology  and  the  higher 
religious   thought  ?     Of   all   preachers,  Frederick 
Robertson  has  most  moved  the  mind  and  conscience 
of  this  generation  ;  but  though  an  Oxford  man  of 
the  time  when  the  Tracts  were  at  their  mightiest,  he 
escaped  from  their  toils  with  a  rare  love  of  reality, 
an  abhorrence  of  all  false  sanctities,  a  dread  of  all 
violence  offered  in  the  name  of  authority  to  reason. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEU 


317 


Frederick  Maurice  was  a  personality  of  rare  charm, 
with  a  soul  ever  turned  towards  the  light,  with  a 
large  range  of  vision,  and  a  love  of  love  and  light 
that  makes  him  the  most  mystical  thinker  of  our 
century  ;  yet  his  whole  life  was  one  sustained  protest 
against  the  attempt  to  incorporate  the  religion  of 
Christ  in  a  sentimental  and  sacramental  symbolism. 
There  has  been  in  our  generation  no  writer  in 
religious  history  so  picturesque,  no  churchman  so 
bold  in  speech  and  in  action,  so  possessed  of  a  broad 
and  inclusive  ideal  of  the  national  church  as  Arthur 
Stanley  ;  but  he  lived  and  died  as  the  resolute 
antagonist  of  those  Catholic  schemes  that  so  laboured 
to  sectionalize  the  church  he  loved.  Of  another, 
though  lower,  order  was  Charles  Kingsley  ;  but  he 
was  in  his  earlier  period  full  of  generous  impulses, 
philanthropies,  socialisms,  quick  and  fertile  at  em- 
bodying his  ameliorative  dreams  in  attractive  fiction  ; 
and  he  was  possessed  with  what  can  only  be 
described  as  a  great  terror  lest  the  rising  tide  of 
sacerdotalism  should  drown  what  was  most  ethical 
and  historical  in  the  life  of  the  English  people.  If 
Oxford  has  had  within  this  period  a  scholar  who 
could  be  named  a  Humanist,  it  was  Mark  Pattison. 
But,  though  he  fell  under  the  spell  of  Newman — and 
indeed  for  him  the  spell  was  never  broken — yet  to 
him  the  Catholic  theory  became  ever  more  incredible 
and  false,  and  the  system  ever  more  mischievous  in 
its  working,  fatal  to  freedom,  learning,  and  all  the 
fair  humanities.     It  may,  too,  be  allowed  to  me 


3i3 


CATHOLICISM 


to  allude  to  one,  though  the  grass  above  his  grave 
is  not  yet  green,  who,  of  all  recent  Oxford  men, 
most  fulfilled  the  ideal  of  the  scholar  in  theology  ; 
and  applied  in  a  spirit  as  reverent  as  it  was 
thorough  the  scientific  method  to  the  history  of 
ecclesiastical  institutions.  But  there  was  no  man 
who  so  strongly  believed,  or  was  so  armed  with 
proofs  to  support  his  belief,  that  Anglo-Catholicism 
was  utterly  unhistorical,  as  Edwin  Hatch.  It  is 
needless  to  multiply  names  ;  it  is  not  in  literature 
nor  yet  in  theology  that  the  movement  has  hitherto 
achieved  success.1  Perhaps  success  here  is  not 
possible  to  it ;  the  signal  of  victory  would  be  the 
sign  of  decease. 

§  V.  The  Anglican  and  the  Broad  Church 

But  this  has  brought  us  face  to  face  with  another 
and  no  less  interesting  problem,  or  rather  series  of 
problems.  How  does  it  happen  that  the  party  that 
has  been  so  active  and  so  eminent  in  literature  has 
accomplished  so  little  in  religion,  while  the  party 
that  has  accomplished  most  in  religion  has  been  less 
eminent  in  literature?  For  two  things  seem  mani- 
fest and  beyond  dispute — the  decay,  pointing  to 


1  We  do  not  forget  distinguished  names  in  connection  with 
the  Anglo-Catholic  school.  It  has  had,  and  still  has,  learned 
historians  and  men  of  fine  literary  gifts  ;  but  to  have  noticed 
these  would  have  taken  us  beyond  the  limits  defined  by  our 
problem.  What  was  intended  was  to  measure  influence  by  the 
major  rather  than  the  minor  intellects. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  319 


approaching  extinction,  of  the  Broad  Church,  and 
the  revival  and  growing  dominancy  of  the  High. 
It  may  seem  more  dubious  to  say,  a  main  condition 
of  the  success  achieved  by  the  High  Church  has 
been  the  literary  activity  and  efficiency  of  the  Broad ; 
but,  paradoxical  though  it  may  sound,  this  represents 
the  sober  historical  truth.  Why  it  has  so  happened 
is  a  question  we  must  discuss  in  order  to  get  a  fuller 
view  of  the  situation. 

I.  The  same  events  that  had  occasioned  the  rise 
of  Anglo-Catholicism  determined  the  being  of  the 
modern  Broad  Church.  The  latter  was  due  to  an 
attempt  to  adapt  the  Church  to  the  new  conditions 
by  broadening  it  as  the  State  had  been  broadened. 
Its  fundamental  notion  was  not  their  ideal  difference, 
but  their  material  identity.  The  Broad  Church  has 
throughout  its  history  been  dominated,  though  not 
always  clearly  or  consciously,  by  Arnold's  idea,  which 
was  also  Hooker's,  of  the  coincidence  and  co-exten- 
sion of  Church  and  State.  The  idea  is  at  once 
English  and  historical ;  it  implies  a  far  deeper  sense 
than  the  other  party  possesses,  of  the  continuity  of 
history  and  the  unity  of  the  institutions  created  and 
mantained  by  the  English  people  both  before  and 
since  the  Reformation.  The  idea  underlying  the 
old  legislation  was  right,  but  the  legislation  was  in 
spirit  and  method  wrong,  calculated  to  defeat  rather 
than  fulfil  its  idea.  What  was  necessary  was  to 
realize  the  idea  by  changing  the  legislation.  Parlia- 
ment had  made  civil  rights  independent  of  ecclesias- 


320 


CA  THOLICISM 


tical  tests ;  tests  ought  now  to  be  so  construed  as  to 
guard  rather  than   invade  religious   freedom  and 
ecclesiastical  privilege.    The  Act  of  Uniformity  had 
but  created  division  and  established  variety  ;  it  was 
time  to  attempt,  by  an  Act  of  comprehension,  to 
legalize  variety  and  create  unity.    The  idea  was  thus, 
through  the  State  to  reconstitute  and  reunite  the 
church,  as  by  the  State  the  church  had  been  broken 
and  divided.    Comprehension  and  relaxed  subscrip- 
tion were  to  undo  what  uniformity  and  enforced 
subscription  had  done.    The  Broad  Church  was  thus 
the  very  opposite  of  the  Anglo-Catholic  ;  while  the 
one  emphasized  difference  till  it  became  indepen- 
dency, the  other  accentuated  coincidence  and  relation 
till  they  became  identity.    The  primary  element  in 
the  one  idea  was, — the  English  people  constitute  the 
English  church  ;  the  primary  element  in  the  other 
idea  was, — the    Anglican   church   constitutes  the 
religion  the  English  people  are  bound  to  confess 
and   obey.     The    one    conceived  the   church  as 
national,  able  to  be,  only  as  it  included  and  was 
realized  by  the  nation ;   the  other  conceived  the 
church  as  of  divine  authority,  because   of  divine 
institution,  able  to  fulfil  its  mission  only  by  enforcing 
its  claims.    In  the  one  case,  not  establishment,  but 
incorporation  with  the  State  or  in  the  civil  constitution 
was  of  the  very  essence  of  the  church  as  English 
and  national ;  in  the  other  case,  control  of  the  church 
by  the  State  was  held  to  be  alien  to  its  very  idea  as 
a  society  divinely  founded  and  ruled.    The  parties 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW        32 1 

differed  in  their  conception  of  the  church,  but  still 
more  in  their  notion  of  religion.  To  the  Anglican, 
in  a  very  real  sense,  church  was  religion,  that  without 
which  religion  could  not  be  acceptable  to  God,  or 
sufficient  for  man  ;  to  the  Broad  Churchman  the  two 
were  separable,  religion  being  inward,  spiritual,  a 
matter  of  heart  or  conscience,  while  church  was  a 
means  for  its  cultivation,  good  in  proportion  to  its  suit- 
ability and  efficiency.  In  polity  and  dogma,  ritual 
and  symbol,  the  Anglican  could  hardly  distinguish 
between  accidental  and  essential — all  was  of  God, 
and  all  was  sacred  ;  but  in  all  these  things  his 
opponent  saw  the  creations  of  custom  or  law,  to  be 
upheld  or  dismissed  as  expediency  or  advantage 
might  determine.  In  a  word,  to  the  one  the  church 
was  a  creation  of  God,  instituting  religion  ;  but  to  the 
other  the  church  was  an  institution  of  man,  though 
religion  was  an  inspiration  of  God. 

2.  Now  these  differences  were  radical,  and  deter- 
mined in  each  case  the  mental  attitude  and  action  on 
all  religious  questions.  The  Broad  Church  attitude 
tended  to  become  critical,  acutely  conscious  of  the 
inconvenience  of  a  too  positive  mind  and  institutions 
too  authoritative  to  be  capable  of  adaptation  to  the 
new  conditions  of  thought  and  policy.  Civil  legisla- 
tion was  conceived  as  able  to  accomplish  what  was 
impossible  to  it ;  while  the  differences  that  divided, 
the  agreements  or  affinities  that  united  men,  were 
conceived  more  from  without  than  from  within,  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  State  rather  than  of  the  Church. 

21 


322 


CATHOLICISM 


Hence,  there  was  superabundant  criticism  of  things 
positive,  the  dogmas  which  authority  had  formulated 
and  enforced,  the  institutions  it  created  and  upheld. 
The  criticism  struck  the  Evangelical  most  heavily, 
for  his  faith  was  of  the  fixed  and  frigid  type  that 
most  invites  criticism.  The  Pauline  Epistles  were 
translated  into  a  speech  and  resolved  into  ideas  that 
were  not  his  ;  his  theories  of  justification  and  atone- 
ment were  assailed  at  once  from  the  historical, 
exegetical,  and  speculative  points  of  view ;  his  doc- 
trine of  inspiration  was  discredited  and  made  un- 
tenable, and  his  conception  of  the  church  dismissed 
as  arbitrary  and  insufficient.  But  to  hit  the  Evan- 
gelical so  hard  was  to  do  the  utmost  possible  service 
to  the  Anglican.  It  disabled,  pre-occupied,  paralyzed 
his  most  resolute  adversary,  thinned  his  ranks, 
blunted  his  weapons,  deprived  him  of  the  convictions 
that  give  courage.  Then  the  Broad  Church  criticism, 
while  making  no  impression  on  the  Anglican,  ap- 
pealed to  the  sort  of  minds  the  Evangelicals  had 
been  most  able  to  influence,  surrounded  them  with 
an  atmosphere,  begot  in  them  a  tendency  within  and 
before  which  the  old  Evangelical  formulae  could  not 
vigorously  live ;  and  yet  it  did  nothing  to  provide 
new  homes  or  agencies  for  the  generation  and  direc- 
tion of  religious  life.  The  Broad  Church  is  only  the 
name  of  a  tendency,  but  the  Anglo-Catholic  denotes 
a  party,  well  officered,  well  led,  disciplined,  organized, 
and  inspired  by  a  great  idea.  The  representative 
men  within  the  former  have  all  been  marked  by  a 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD  AND  NEW  323 


certain  severe  individualism ;  they  have  attracted 
disciples,  but  have  not  formed  schools.  Arnold  was 
a  man  of  intense  ethical  passion,  and  to  it  he  owed 
what  we  may  call  the  most  transcendent  personal 
influence  of  our  century  ;  Maurice  was  a  thinker 
seeking  to  translate  Christian  ideas  into  the  terms 
of  a  Neo-Platonic  idealism  ;  Arthur  Stanley  was  a 
charming  irenical  personality,  fertile  of  schemes  for 
reconciling  our  divided  religious  society  ;  but  neither 
they  nor  any  of  their  allies  had  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
sect.  They  loved  a  church  as  broad  and  as  varied 
as  the  English  people,  but  would  neither  do  nor  at- 
tempt anything  that  threatened  to  narrow  its  breadth 
or  harass  it  into  a  prosaic  uniformity.  And  their 
positive  qualities  helped  the  Anglican  even  more 
than  their  negative.  They  loved  liberty,  used  the 
liberty  they  loved,  but  preached  toleration  even  of 
the  intolerant.  They  were  impatient  of  formulae,  but 
patient  of  aggressive  difference  ;  they  resisted  every 
attempt  to  restrict  freedom,  but  encouraged  attempts 
at  its  extension  and  exercise.  Hence  they  helped  at 
once  to  create  room  for  Anglo  -  Catholic  develop- 
ments and  to  lessen  the  forces  of  resistance.  Their 
intellectual  activity  made  the  English  mind  tolerant 
to  the  most  varied  forms  of  belief  and  worship  ;  which 
means  that  they  prepared  the  way  and  the  oppor- 
tunity for  the  men  who  believed  that  theirs  was  the 
only  form  of  divine  sufficiency  and  authority. 


324 


CATHOLICISM 


\  VI.  The  Theological  Idea  in  the  Anglican  Mind 

I.  Rut  while  the  Broad  Church  was  thus  securing 
for  it  an  easier  path  and  a  freer  field,  the  Anglo- 
Catholics  were  gathering  momentum  and  growing 
more  missionary  and  theological.  The  Tracts  had 
been  mainly  historical  and  ecclesiastical  ;  only  in  a 
very  minor  degree  doctrinal  and  religious.  They 
had  been  more  concerned  with  the  archaeology  than 
the  theology  of  the  church ;  but  the  work  of  Arch- 
deacon Wilberforce  on  the  Incarnation  forced  theo- 
logy to  the  front  with  most  significant  results.  This 
work  is  an  expansion  of  a  section  in  Moehler's  Sym- 
bolik,  which,  in  its  turn,  is  an  application  of  the 
Hegelian  idea  to  the  Catholic  church.  The  idea, 
indeed,  is  much  older  than  Hegel,  but  its  modern 
form  is  due  to  him.  Schelling  formulated  the  no- 
tion :  the  incarnation  of  God  is  an  incarnation  from 
eternity.  Hegel  expressed  the  notion  in  the  terms 
of  the  philosophy  of  history  ;  Moehler  translated  it 
into  a  philosophy  of  Catholicism  ;  and  apparently  its 
changeful  career  is  not  yet  ended.  It  was  said  of 
Petavius,  that  he  so  penetrated  Catholicism  with  the 
Protestant  spirit  that  his  very  apology  for  the  Catho- 
lic system  was  a  victory  for  Protestantism  ;  at  least 
this  much  is  true,  that  in  handling  dogma  he  was 
the  liberal,  and  Bull,  his  great  Anglican  opponent, 
the  conservative.  Now  if  we  substitute  Hegelian  for 
Protestant,  we  may  say  much  the  same  of  Moehler. 
It  is  curious  that  the  fundamental  idea  of  Moehler 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  325 


was  also  the  fundamental  idea  of  Strauss,1  with  this 
difference  :  Strauss  universalized,  but  Moehler  sec- 
tionalized  the  idea.  Strauss  transferred  the  predi- 
cates of  Christ  to  Man,  conceived  humanity  as  the 
Son  of  God,  born  of  the  invisible  Father  and  visible 
Mother  ;  as  eternal,  sinless,  feeble,  suffering,  dying  in 
its  members,  but  in  its  collective  being  risen,  reigning, 
immortal,  infallible,  and  divine.  But  Moehler  re- 
stricted the  divine  predicates  to  the  Catholic  church  ; 
it  was  the  abiding  incarnation  of  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God  continuously  appearing  in  human  form  among 
men,  with  an  existence  ever  renewed,  a  being  eter- 
nally rejuvenescent.  Strauss'  notion  expressed  a 
consistent  Pantheism  ;  humanity  was  the  incarnation 
of  the  divine,  represented  the  process  by  which  the 
impersonal  All  created  persons,  passed  from  subjec- 
tive to  objective  being,  and  was  realized  in  the  realm 
of  conscious  existence.  But  Moehler's  expressed  what 
we  may  term  an  ecclesio-theism,  which  represented 
the  church  as  the  form  in  which  God  existed  for  the 
world,  and  through  which  the  world  could  reach  God. 
The  church  was  thus  conceived  as  arrayed  in  all 
the  attributes  and  possessed  of  all  the  functions  of 
the  Son  of  God.  The  notion  was  audacious,  and 
destined  to  achieve  victories  in  a  field  Moehler  had 
never  dreamed  of;  it  was  adopted  by  Wilberforce, 
though  stated  without  the  sharp  precision  which  dis- 


1  Moehler,  of  course,  was  the  elder  and  earlier.  The  Sym- 
bolik  was  published  in  1832,  the  Lebcn  Jesu  in  1835. 


326 


CA  THOLICISM 


tinguished  Moehler.  The  incarnation  is  the  central 
dogma  of  Christianity  ;  Christ  as  incarnate  is,  on  one 
side,  the  pattern  and  representative  of  humanity  ;  on 
the  other,  the  mediator  between  God  and  man — at 
once  the  one  sacrifice  for  sin  and  the  one  channel  of 
divine  grace.  The  church  is  His  body  mystical  ;  to 
be  united  to  it  is  to  be  united  to  Him.  It  is,  as  it 
were,  His  organized  presence,  exercising  His  functions 
as  Mediator  and  Saviour.  It  is  impossible  to  tell 
"whether  men  are  joined  to  Christ  by  being  joined 
to  His  Church,  or  joined  to  His  Church  by  being 
joined  to  Him.  The  two  relations  hang  inseparably 
together."  Hence  the  value  of  the  sacraments : 
they  "  bind  to  Him,"  make  us  "  participate  in  His 
presence,"  communicate  to  us  His  man's  nature,  in- 
corporate us  in  His  body  mystical,  "  the  renewed 
race "  which  He  "  has  been  pleased  to  identify 
with  Himself."  They  are,  therefore,  the  primary  and 
essential  means  of  grace  on  which  all  others  depend  ; 
they  work  our  unity  with  the  incarnate  Son  of  God, 
and  through  Him  with  the  Father. 

2.  Now  the  significance  of  this  work  lies  here  ;  it 
supplied  the  Anglo-Catholic  movement  with  a  dog- 
matic basis ;  placed  it,  as  it  were,  under  the  control 
of  a  defining  and  determining  idea.  Most  of  the 
positions  had  been  maintained  before ;  what  Wilber- 
force  gave  was  a  co-ordinating  and  unifying  principle. 
This  changed  the  whole  outlook  ;  the  question  did 
not  need  to  be  debated  as  one  of  Patristic  or  Angli- 
can archaeology ;  it  had  a  philosophy ;  its  reason  was 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  327 


one  with  the  reason  of  the  incarnation.  The  church 
was,  as  it  were,  the  Son  of  God  articulated  in  sacra- 
ments, explicated  in  symbols,  organized  into  a  visible 
body  politic  for  the  exercise  of  His  mediation  on 
earth.  This  dogmatic  idea  created  the  new  Ritualism 
as  distinguished  from  the  old  Tractarianism ;  and 
changed  the  centre  of  gravity  from  a  dubious  ques- 
tion in  ecclesiastical  history,  discussed  with  learning, 
but  without  science,  to  a  fact  of  faith  or  living  re- 
ligious belief.  Ritualism  may  be  described  as  the 
evangelical  idea  done  into  the  institutions  and  rites 
of  a  sacerdotal  Church.  The  idea  remains,  and  is 
the  same,  but  its  vehicle  is  changed.  To  speak  with 
Hegel,  the  Begriff  is  translated  back  into  the  Vor- 
stellung,  the  spiritual  truth  is  rendered  into  a  sensu- 
ous picture.  Ritual  is  dogma  in  symbol ;  dogma  is 
articulated  ritual.  Justification  is  as  necessary  as 
ever,  but  it  is  conditioned  on  the  sacraments  rather 
than  on  faith.  Regeneration  is  still  held,  but  it  is 
worked  by  an  outward  act  rather  than  an  inward 
process.  Where  the  pure  preaching  of  the  word 
once  stood,  the  due  administration  of  the  sacraments 
now  stands.  To  it  an  authorized  priesthood  is  neces- 
sary ;  without  it  there  can  be  no  Eucharist,  in  other 
hands  the  Supper  is  no  sacrament  or  efficacious 
means  of  grace.  In  order  to  a  valid  priesthood  there 
must  be  a  constitutive  authority — the  bishops  who 
stand  in  the  apostolical  succession  ;  and  a  constitutive 
act — ordination  at  their  hands.  The  chain  is  com- 
plete :  without  the  apostolical  authority  no  bishop ; 


328 


CA  THOLICISM 


without  the  bishop  no  priest ;  without  the  priest  no 
sacrament ;  without  the  sacraments  no  church  ;  with- 
out the  church  no  means  of  grace,  no  mediation  or 
reconciliation  through  Christ  of  man  with  God.  Two 
things  are  essential  to  the  church,  the  clergy  and 
the  sacraments  ;  and  of  these  the  clergy  are  the 
greater,  for  without  them  the  full  sacraments  cannot 
be,  while  the  sacraments  cannot  but  be  where  they 
are.  They  are  therefore  in  a  most  real  sense  of  the 
essence  of  the  church,  while  the  people  are  but  an 
accident ;  the  clergy  represent  its  formal  or  normative 
authority — i.e.,  they  are  the  regulative  principle  of  its 
being,  give  status  to  the  people,  do  not  find  in  them 
the  condition  and  warrant  of  their  own  existence. 
But,  so  construed,  the  theory  is  less  a  doctrine  of  the 
church  than  of  its  officers  ;  it  is  not  the  Christian 
Society  or  people  or  commonwealth  constituting  its 
officers  or  priesthood,  but  the  priesthood  constituting 
the  people.  In  its  Anglican  form  the  Apostolical 
Succession  of  the  clergy,  or  the  bishops  who  ordain 
the  clergy,  is  a  denial  of  the  Apostolical  descent  of 
the  Church.  And  so,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  the 
greater  the  emphasis  which  is  thrown  upon  the  idea 
of  the  clergy,  the  meaner  becomes  the  idea  of  the 
Church  ;  and  so  we  may  add,  that  here  the  Broad 
Church  has  a  nobler  idea  than  the  Anglo-Catholic. 
To  resolve  the  English  church  into  the  Christian 
people  of  England  is  to  show  a  right  conception  of 
the  place  of  the  people  within  it  ;  but  to  resolve  it 
into  a  hierarchy  or  hierocracy,  with  its  instruments 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  329 


and  dependencies,  is  utterly  to  misconceive  the  rela- 
tion of  the  society  and  its  organs. 

Yet  even  under  these  conditions  the  evangelical 
idea  has  proved  its  energy  ;  the  men  who  have  con- 
strued their  church  and  their  order  through  their 
Christology,  have  been  of  another  spirit  than  the  men 
who  construed  them  through  Patristic  and  Anglican 
tradition  as  interpreted  by  an  impossible  canon. 
The  change  is  so  marked,  that,  did  we  know  only  the 
first  stage  of  the  process  and  the  last,  we  could  not 
believe  that  they  were  moments  in  the  life  of  the 
same  party.  Ritualism,  while  the  most  superficial, 
is  the  least  characteristic  sign  of  the  change  ;  one 
deeper  and  more  real,  is  the  supersession  of  the  old 
aristocratic  spirit  by  one  humaner  and  more  demo- 
cratic. The  new  men  are  possessed,  as  the  old  were 
not,  by  missionary  zeal,  by  the  passion  to  reach  and 
reclaim  the  masses,  by  the  endeavour  to  make  the 
church  the  attractive  home  of  the  people,  and  the 
people  the  obedient  sons  of  the  church.  The  re- 
ligious polemics  of  the  older  men  were  often  inspired 
by  the  intensest  political  antipathy  to  "  Liberalism  " 
and  all  its  works,  even  when  these  were  philanthropic 
or  remedial.  But  the  new  men  are  distinguished 
by  a  progressive  spirit,  which  has  tempted  the  more 
forward  to  grapple,  in  the  interests  of  the  poor,  with 
our  graver  social  problems,  and  even  to  help  in  their 
practical  solution.  Of  course  the  country  has 
changed  at  once  with  the  party  and  because  of  it ; 
while  common  tendencies  have  been  at  work  in  both, 


330 


CA  THOLICISM 


shaping  their  respective  activities,  and  modifying 
their  mutual  relations.  The  sense  of  responsibility 
to  the  people,  which  is  a  tribute  levied  by  their  acces- 
sion to  power,  has,  of  course,  penetrated  what  used  to 
be  called  the  governing  classes ;  the  men  who  serve 
the  State  live  under  a  more  jealous  criticism,  and  the 
men  who  minister  in  the  Church  have  become  more 
conscious  of  duties,  parochial  and  national.  But,  for 
the  clergy,  the  Anglo-Catholic  revival  has  given  at 
once  form  and  sanction  to  this  new  consciousness  of 
duty ;  it  has  made  them,  while  more  priestly,  more 
evangelical,  ministers  of  a  more  ornate  service, 
studiously  seeking  to  help  worship  by  a  richer  sym- 
bolism, and  to  teach  dogma  by  a  more  elaborate 
ceremonial.  Under  their  hands  the  church  has  be- 
come a  new  institution,  more  active,  more  aggressive, 
making  claims  that  would  have  bewildered  or  amused 
the  men  of  fifty  years  ago.  But  while  merely 
academic  claims  are  heard  with  scorn,  claims  sup- 
ported by  devoted  lives,  and  illustrated  by  fulfilled 
duties,  are,  even  when  doubted,  patiently  endured. 
The  clergy  believe  that  in  their  hands  are  the  in- 
struments of  life  ;  and  they  multiply  symbols  and 
administer  sacraments  as  men  who  possess  and  dis- 
tribute the  grace  that  saves. 

§  VII.  The  Theological  Idea  in  the  Church 

i.  But  we  must  now  attempt  to  discover  and  de- 
fine in  what  respects  the  theological  idea  has  affected 
and  changed  the  conception  of  the  church  in  the 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW        33 1 


newer  Anglo-Catholicism,  so  as  to  distinguish  it  from 
the  older.  We  may  say,  then,  that  the  new  men  are 
less  Anglican  and  more  catholic  than  the  old,  using 
the  term  catholic  in  its  proper  and  not  in  the  Roman 
sense.  Their  church,  while  no  less  political  or  in- 
stitutional, is  more  ideal ;  they  conceive  it  more 
through  a  dogma  or  a  philosophy  than  through  a 
fixed  and  provincial,  or  limited,  tradition.  The  old 
and  the  new  agree  in  identifying  what  may  be 
described  as  a  given  framework  of  the  church  with 
its  essence  ;  they  agree  as  to  its  polity,  the  value  and 
function  of  its  sacraments,  the  origin,  necessity,  gra- 
dation, and  succession  of  its  orders.  These  things 
must  be,  that  the  church  may  be ;  whatever  may  be 
changed  or  transcended,  they  must  stand.  In  all  its 
forms  Anglo-Catholicism  is  a  theory  as  to  the  neces- 
sity of  a  specific  ministry  to  the  church,  not  of  the 
church  to  any  ministry.  But  these  points  of  agree- 
ment only  emphasize  the  point  of  difference,  with  all 
that  follows  from  it.  This  point  may  be  stated  thus  : 
the  determinative  principle  of  the  older  men  was 
historical — tradition  ;  but  the  determinative  principle 
of  the  younger  men  is  metaphysical — a  doctrine. 
What  we  may  term  the  immanent  idea  is  in  each 
case  different ;  in  the  one  it  was  an  objective  model, 
or  specific  authority — certain  Fathers  as  interpreted 
by  certain  Anglican  divines  ;  but  in  the  other  it  is  an 
underlying  philosophy  or  theology,  which  penetrates 
and  modifies  the  whole  conception  of  the  Church, 
and  governs  the  methods  and  use  of  historical  proof. 


?>32 


CATHOLICISM 


This  philosophy  or  theology  may  be  conveniently 
described,  though  by  a  species  of  synecdoche,  as  the 
notion  of  the  church  in  its  Catholic  or  Anglican 
sense  as  "  naturally  of  a  piece  with  the  Incarna- 
tion "  ; 1  in  other  words,  the  church  is  so  construed 
through  the  Incarnation  as  to  experience  a  kind  of 
apotheosis,  or  to  become  "  a  new  and  higher  mode  " 
of  the  profoundest  mystery  known  to  the  Christian 
Faith.  The  poetry  in  the  sublime  and  beautiful 
image  of  Paul, — the  Church  is  the  body  of  Christ, — is, 
for  the  benefit  of  an  institution,  turned  into  the  most 
prosaic  of  prose.  Truths  that  relate  to  the  thean- 
thropic  Person,  His  sanctity,  His  sovereignty  over 
mind,  His  authority  over  conscience  through  belief, 
become  predicable  of  a  church  with  a  specific  organi- 
zation, which,  as  continuing  the  work  of  the  Founder, 
is  the  only  recognised  way  of  man  reaching  God  or 
God  reaching  man.  "  Access  to  God  "  is  free  to  a 
man,  provided  he  belongs  to  the  one  body  ;  "  fellow- 
ship with  God  "  is  possible  "  only  through  member- 
ship in  the  one  body  and  by  dependence  on  social 
sacraments,"  "  of  which  ordained  ministers  are  the 
appointed  instruments."  2  And  so  the  church,  taken 
as  strictly  an  episcopal  and  sacerdotal  institution, 
becomes  the  mystical  and  "  Spirit-bearing "  body,3 
created  and  inhabited  by  Christ,  and  possessed  of  all 

1  Gore,  The  Church  and  the  Ministry,  p.  64  ;  Lux  Mundi, 
P-  367. 

2  Gore,  The  Church  and  the  Ministry,  pp.  93,  94. 

3  Lux  Mundi,  p.  321. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  333 


the  energies,  capabilities,  and  functions  of  a  living 
organism.  It  may  be  conceived  as  a  colossal  in- 
dividual, whose  years  are  centuries,  whose  life  is 
continuous,  and  who  alone  is  able,  by  virtue  of  its 
apostolic  descent  and  proper  administration  of  sacra- 
ments, to  articulate  and  realize  Christ's  presence  on 
earth. 

2.  So  much  for  the  determinative  idea  translated 
into  an  ecclesiastical  and  institutional  form  ;  now  a 
word  or  two  as  to  its  action  on  Anglo-Catholicism. 
For  one  thing,  the  point  of  emphasis  was  changed  ; 
it  passed  from  the  Patristic  period  to  the  church  as  a 
unity,  living,  catholic,  continuous.  The  change  was, 
as  it  were,  from  the  idea  of  the  law  that  ruled  the 
body,  to  the  idea  of  the  body  that  made  the  law. 
The  church  in  a  sense  superseded  the  Fathers,  and 
though  Apostolic  and  Patristic  voices  are  still  heard 
with  reverence,  it  is  less  as  independent  authorities  and 
more  as  organs  through  which  the  society  has  spoken  ; 
they  must  be  canonized  that  they  may  have  authority. 
But  this  change  involves  another.  The  authority  the 
older  men  appealed  to  was  specific  and  concrete, 
— antiquity  as  understood  by  recognized  Anglican 
scholars ;  but  the  authority  of  the  younger  men  is 
more  general  and  ideal,  either  a  composite  abstraction 
spoken  of  in  historical  terms  as  "  the  Catholic 
Church,"  or  a  series  of  selected  opinions  called  "  the 
Catholic  Tradition."  By  the  very  terms  of  the  appeal 
and  the  logical  necessities  of  the  situation,  the 
authority  appealed  to  is  masked  and  made  but  an 


334 


CA  THOLICISM 


echo  of  the  appealing  voice  ;  for  an  eclectic  Catholi- 
cism is  the  most  arbitrary  of  individualisms.  It  is  but 
subjective  tendencies  or  judgments  done  into  oecu- 
menical formulae.  The  man  who  speaks  is  for  the 
time  being  "the  Catholic  Church";  the  thing  he 
believes  is  "  the  Catholic  Tradition."  And  under  the 
use  of  concrete  terms  he  hides  a  pure  abstraction, 
which  has  nothing  corresponding  to  it  in  the  whole 
field  of  history.  If  the  usage  and  connotation  be 
carefully  analyzed,  we  shall  find  that  what  it  really 
denotes  is  the  merest  "  private  judgment"  enunciating 
its  own  deliverances  and  definitions  as  decrees  of  the 
catholic  church.  And  this  involves  another  differ- 
ence :  the  older  men  defended  dogma  by  institutions, 
the  younger  defend  institutions  by  dogma ;  which 
means  that  the  attitude  of  the  mind  to  the  ideal  con- 
tents of  religion  and  to  the  intellectual  tendencies  of 
the  age  has  changed.  The  old  attitude  to  reason  was 
hostile,  the  new  is  friendly  ;  the  older  men  had  the 
idea  of  an  authority  that  must  be  obeyed,  but  the 
younger  have  the  idea  of  an  authority  that  must  be 
adapted  to  living  thought.  The  "  Anglicans  "  laboured 
so  to  organize  the  church  after  a  definite  ideal,  that 
it  might  the  more  effectually  resist  the  modern  spirit : 
but  the  new  "  Catholics  "  endeavour  so  to  construe 
the  traditional  creed  as  to  make  it  incorporate  the 
ideas  of  the  age.  The  "  Anglican "  idea  of  the 
church  was  more  concrete,  and  its  conception  of 
authority  more  defined  ;  while  the  "  Catholic "  idea 
of  authority  is  more  elastic,  and  of  the  church,  on  the 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  335 


intellectual  side,  more  flexible — so  much  so,  that  it  is 
conceived  as  able  to  assimilate  all  new  material,  to 
welcome  and  give  place  to  all  new  knowledge.1  In  a 
word,  a  new  philosophy,  and,  as  a  consequence,  a  new 
theology,  has  penetrated  the  Anglican  system  :  and, 
though  old  terms  and  positions  survive,  the  philo- 
sophy has  just  to  be  allowed  to  do  its  work,  and  the 
new  will  not  be  as  the  old. 

§  VIII.  The  Church  and  the  Age 

My  purpose  has  been  analytical  and  historical 
rather  than  critical ;  and  I  shall  not  here  attempt  a 
criticism,  either  philosophical  or  historical,  of  the 
theory  whose  growth  has  been  described.2  But  I 
may  venture,  in  conclusion,  to  raise  two  practical 
points  which  seem  to  deserve  discussion. 

1.  The  church  may  have  a  message  to  the  age,  but 
the  age  has  also  a  message  to  the  church.  And  it  is 
possible  that  in  the  age's  message  there  may  be  most 
of  the  voice  of  God.  To  the  being  and  character  of 
the  age  the  church  has  contributed ;  and  has  there- 
fore its  own  share  of  responsibility  for  what  the  age 
is.  In  every  period  its  one  clear  duty  is  this — to 
turn  for  living  men  the  idealities  of  religion  into  the 
realities  of  being.  Hence  the  question  which  our  age 
addresses  to  the  church  may  be  stated  thus  : — Is 
there  any  power  within  you  that  can  make  the  Chris- 

1  Lux  Mundi,  Preface,  p.  ix. 

2  But  see  ante,  pp.  167  ff.  ;  and  the  concluding  chapters  ot 
the  Place  of  Christ,  etc. 


336 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


tian  Faith  credible  to  the  living  reason  and  authori- 
tative to  the  living  conscience  ?  Are  you  able  to 
make  it  so  to  pervade  the  atmosphere  we  breathe, 
and  impregnate  the  soil  on  which  we  grow,  as  to  be, 
as  if  by  a  natural  process,  incorporated  into  our 
being,  or  as  to  become  the  determinative  factor  of 
our  personal  characters,  ideals,  ends,  and  of  our 
collective  customs,  institutions,  laws  ?  To  have  such 
a  problem  so  stated  is  to  feel  rebuked  and  humbled. 
We  are  in  the  nineteenth  century  of  the  Christian 
era  ;  for  almost  all  these  centuries  Christianity  has 
lived  on  our  soil,  for  the  greater  part  of  them  we  have 
been  formally  and  ostensibly  Christian.  Yet  we  are 
faced  by  problems  which  imply  that  there  are  whole 
provinces  of  our  national  and  social  life  where  Chris- 
tianity as  a  religion  has  little  place  and  less  power, 
and  a  multitude  of  minds  for  whom  it  has  as  a  Faith 
no  reality,  no  credibility,  and  no  authority.  At  such 
a  moment  to  profess  pessimism  were  to  confess  to 
defeat ;  but  to  cultivate  optimism  were  to  prepare  for 
extinction.  Xo  man  who  believes  in  the  Christian 
religion  can  despair  of  its  success  ;  no  man  who  loves 
his  people  can  be  satisfied  with  their  state,  or  per- 
suade himself  that  it  proves  the  sufficiency  of  the 
church  or  churches  which  have  been  charged  with  the 
realization  of  the  religion.  Class  interests,  passions, 
prejudices,  still  reign  un tempered  by  love  ;  they  have 
grown  more  bitter  and  dangerous  since  they  have 
come  to  contend  hand  to  hand,  foot  to  foot,  for  the 
seat  of  sovereignty.     The  rebellion  arms  can  quell 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  337 


may  be  easily  ended  ;  but  the  slow  revolution  worked 
by  inexorable  law  mocks  at  arms  or  dynastic  forces, 
and  can  be  changed  into  a  beneficent  process  only  by 
the  gracious  energies  of  religion.  Such  a  revolution  is 
even  now  in  process  ;  but  has  religion  so  penetrated 
the  people  by  whom  it  is  being  accomplished  that 
the  church  can  watch  its  completion  with  a  light 
heart  and  an  easy  conscience?  Our  political  prob- 
lems are  grave,  but  our  economical  are  graver,  and 
still  more  grave  are  our  social.  Towards  the  solution 
of  the  economical  many  natural  factors  are  co-oper- 
ating ;  the  intellects  and  energies  engaged  in  the 
industries  are,  by  combinations,  councils,  arbitrations, 
and  enlarged  education,  by  securing  the  more  equal 
and  equitable  distribution  of  wealth,  contributing  to 
the  creation  of  happier  conditions.  But  in  the  solu- 
tion of  our  social  problems  the  supreme  factor  is  the 
religious,  the  factor  that  fashions  upright,  honourable, 
beneficent  men,  that  substitutes  the  reign  of  ordering 
love  for  Rousseau's  social  contract  or  the  iron  hand 
of  Hobbes'  strong  man.  Of  all  States,  a  democratic 
most  needs  virtue,  integrity,  disinterestedness  of  mo- 
tive, sanity  of  intellect,  and  inflexibility  of  moral  will 
in  its  governors  and  guides  ;  but  while  we  cultivate 
politics  with  passion,  do  we  not  leave  the  creation 
of  the  politician  to  chance  ?  Have  our  people  been 
constrained  to  conceive  that  the  office  of  the  states- 
man is  not  less  sacred  than  the  office  of  the  church- 
man, and  demands,  because  of  its  greater  perils  and 
more  manifold  temptations,  a  more  enlightened  con- 

22 


338 


CA  THOLICISM 


science  and  a  larger  endowment  of  grace  ?  Few 
things  are  more  disastrous  to  a  society  than  the  sub- 
stitution of  conventional  for  moral  standards  of 
judgment ;  and  is  it  too  much  to  say  that  the  society 
most  purely  ecclesiastical  is  also  the  most  thoroughly 
conventional  ?  Immoralities  live  as  they  have  never 
lived  before  in  the  public  eye,  and  the  scandals  of  the 
West  End  do  more  to  debauch  the  national  con- 
science than  all  the  sordid  vice  and  gaunt  poverty  of 
the  East.  We  seem  to  have  reached  a  state  where 
evil  has  more  solidarity  than  good  :  rich  and  poor 
meet  together  and  understand  each  other  more  in 
their  vices  than  in  their  religion,  which  ought  to  have 
destroyed  their  vices,  root  and  branch.  But  within 
the  community  there  lives  this  difference :  the  rich 
have  the  gift  of  oblivion  in  a  higher  degree  than  the 
poor.  The  easy  conscience  of  society  sweetly  for- 
gives the  man  who  has  sown  his  wild  oats,  but  the 
retentive  memory  of  the  people  does  not  so  readily 
forget  the  ruin  he  may  have  worked  in  the  process. 
These,  and  things  like  these,  formulate  grave  problems 
for  the  church.  How  have  they  come  to  be  ?  How 
is  their  being  to  be  ended  ?  The  higher  the  theory 
of  the  church  the  deeper  ought  to  be  the  notion  of 
its  responsibility  ;  the  greater  our  idea  of  its  power 
and  its  function,  the  more  sternly  must  we  judge  its 
failure.  Wisdom  is  justified  by  her  works  :  but  if 
the  works  are  not  there,  or  there  in  an  altogether 
inadequate  degree,  what  becomes  of  the  justification  ? 
But  the  deepest  and  most  pathetic  appeal  which 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  339 


our  age  can  make  to  the  church  concerns  the  ques- 
tion of  what  it  is  to  believe.  The  living  intellect  and 
the  historical  faith  have  somehow  drifted,  if  not 
asunder,  yet  out  of  relation :  and  where  truth  does  not 
live  to  the  reason  it  can  have  no  authority  for  the 
conscience.  The  characteristic  of  the  age  is  here 
not  so  much  unbelief  as  a  want  of  belief,  so  ex- 
tensively and  uniformly  diffused  as  to  represent  a 
common  tendency  rather  than  specific  causes.  It  is 
distributed  through  all  classes,  and  is  peculiar  to 
none,  though  it  receives  in  each  characteristic  expres- 
sion. Among  the  less  skilled  labourers  it  is  simply 
indifference ;  poverty  shows  no  mercy  to  ideals, 
thinking  that  what  brings  no  amelioration  is  entitled 
to  no  reverence.  The  man  who  with  hungry  mouths 
to  feed  struggles  with  failing  strength  to  feed  them, 
will  not  long  continue  to  find  comfort  in  contem- 
plating the  beauty  and  sufficiency  of  abstract  truth. 
The  response  of  the  poor  to  a  religion  which  has  no 
concern  or  cure  for  poverty,  is  neglect  of  the  religion. 
Again,  the  hard-headed  artisan  has  difficulties  of 
another  and  more  varied  order,  and  they  grow  with 
his  rather  moody  and  defiant  independence.  He  is 
proud,  sensitive  to  small  things,  especially  if  touched 
with  affront  or  condescension  or  disdain,  and  con- 
scious of  a  manhood  too  honourable  to  brook  those 
class  and  caste  distinctions  that  are  often  only  the 
more  emphasized  by  the  circumstances  and  conven- 
tions of  common  worship.  Or  he  brings  a  vigorous 
intellect,  all  the  severer  in  its  logic  for  being  without 


340 


CATHOLICISM 


formal  culture,  to  bear  on  formulae  that  have  survived 
their  occasion  or  lost  their  original  sense,  and  yet 
have  in  his  mind  continued  to  be  identified  with  the 
essence  of  religion  ;  and  he  forthwith  resolves  the 
formulae  and  the  religion  into  a  series  of  fantastic 
absurdities,  which  only  folly  or  knavery  or  the  blind- 
est self-interest  can  tempt  men  to  believe.  The 
parson  or  preacher  he  regards  with  lofty  scorn  as 
the  mercenary  impersonation  of  all  the  superstitions 
he  most  despises  ;  and  his  most  effective  and  offensive 
weapons  of  assault  he  draws  from  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures,  conceived  as  so  inspired  that  every  word, 
character,  and  event  is  due  to  the  direct  action  of 
the  Almighty.  In  the  educated  classes  similar  types 
of  unbelief,  often  in  still  cruder  forms,  are  represented  ; 
only  here  fashion  and  current  tendencies  account  for 
more.  The  fleshly  materialism  of  our  gilded  youth, 
too  gross  to  care  for  any  intellectual  justification,  is 
an  utterly  vile  thing  ;  while  noble  purposes  may  live 
within  and  speak  through  the  reason  and  conscience 
of  the  secularist  artisan.  The  doubt  that  is  too  in- 
dolent to  reason  or  to  be  reasoned  with,  or  that  is 
indulged  as  a  private  intellectual  luxury,  or  that  is 
used  to  give  point  and  flavour  to  an  otherwise  vacu- 
ous cynicism  ;  the  agnosticism  that  speaks  the  language 
of  one  set,  and  the  pessimism  that  repeats  the  for- 
mulae of  another  ;  the  cultivated  indifference  that 
treats  as  bad  form  every  allusion  to  religion  ;  the 
culture  that  believes  in  translating  dogma  into  the 
language  of  the  club  or  the  coterie ;  the  scientific 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  34I 


temper  that  despises  religion,  or  benevolently  deals 
with  it  as  if  it  were  a  thing  for  weak  or  dishonest 
intellects,  because  it  does  not  follow  the  processes  or 
attain  the  results  of  some  science  misdescribed  as 
exact — these  and  many  similar  phases  of  floating 
opinion  may  be  found  in  society  and  in  literature. 
They  are  easily  over-estimated,  easily  under-esti- 
mated, and  still  more  easily  misconceived.  Singly 
they  may  be  insignificant,  but  collectively  their  sig- 
nificance is  immense.  They  mean  that  the  unsettle- 
ment  of  belief  is  general  ;  that  men  cannot  think, 
or  speak,  in  the  society  of  the  thoughtful,  without 
feeling  it ;  that  in  religious  matters  it  is  true  cour- 
tesy to  assume  difference,  and  avoid  speech :  and 
that  it  is  only  reasonable  to  suppose  that  every  new 
science  will  be  in  conflict  with  the  old  faith.  But 
the  fateful  agitation  is  not  the  superficial  ;  it  is  rather 
the  deeper  movement  of  thought  that  throws  up 
and  throws  out  the  bubbles  and  eddies  of  the  surface. 
The  old  conception  of  nature  and  man,  of  the  uni- 
verse and  its  history,  is  breaking  up  ;  a  new  concep- 
tion is  making  its  way  into  the  collective  conscious- 
ness and  becoming  the  regulative  principle  of  all 
its  thinking  ;  with  the  inevitable  result  that  religious 
beliefs,  if  they  are  to  live,  must  undergo  a  correspon- 
dent transformation.  Our  most  real  and  radical 
scientific  enquiries  raise  questions  as  to  creation, 
the  Creator  and  His  mode  of  working,  as  to  man 
and  his  origin,  the  being  of  sin,  the  birth  of  re- 
ligion, the  reality  of  progress  ;  our  most  rigorous 


342 


CA  THOLICISM 


and  fruitful  historical  enquiries  deal  with  the  gene- 
sis of  social  and  religious  institutions,  the  evolu- 
tion of  thought,  the  formation  and  growth,  now  of 
mythologies,  now  of  theologies  ;  the  place  and 
composition  of  religious  books,  the  appearance  and 
action  of  religious  personalities  ;  and  these  in  the 
most  inexorable  way  compel  men,  if  they  would 
be  reasonable  while  religious,  to  ask  how  the  new 
methods  affect  their  own  beliefs.  The  scientific 
temper  of  to-day  may  be  described  as  a  passion  to 
explore  and  explain  origins,  and  to  find  out  the 
reason  and  method  of  a  thing's  becoming  ;  and  it 
is  so  universal  that  no  belief  or  institution  can  es- 
cape the  enquiry,  how,  when,  and  why  it  came  to 
be.  This  means  that  the  ultimate  problem  of  a 
church  is  not  to  explain  the  faith  it  has  authorita- 
tively defined,  but  to  vindicate  the  process  by  which 
it  became  possessed  of  the  authority  to  define  it, 
the  competence  to  enforce  what  it  has  defined. 
Hence  the  final  word  of  our  age  to  Anglo-Catholi- 
cism, and  all  modes  of  verifying  theology  or  realiz- 
ing religion  by  authoritative  institutions  is  this  : 
What  claims  to  authenticate  our  most  fundamental 
beliefs  must  have  nothing  dubious  about  its  own  title 
deeds. 

It  is  possible  to  speak  in  this  way,  simply  because 
above  all  other  facts  this  fact  is  evident :  that  the 
Christian  religion  has  not  been  so  interpreted  by  the 
societies  or  churches  in  England  whose  mission  it  is 
to  realize  it,  as  to  have  penetrated,  possessed  and  com- 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  343 


manded  the  English  people.  We  are  still  far  from  the 
kingdom  of  heaven ;  and  of  all  evidences  of  truth,  alike 
as  regards  a  man  and  a  society,  the  most  infallible 
is  the  ancient  canon,  "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them."  This  is  not  to  be  construed  as  a  word  of 
reproach  against  the  English  church  as  a  church. 
The  writer  feels  that  there  is  nothing  less  noble  or 
more  despicable  than  the  mutual  reproaches  of  re- 
ligious men  and  societies,  or  the  memory  too  mind- 
ful of  past  faults,  and  too  forgetful  of  present  duties, 
especially  those  of  charity  and  truth.  But  what  he 
means  is  this,  that  those  who  claim  that  a  given 
church  is  the  one  and  only  divinely  created  and 
guided  church  of  Christ  for  the  English  people, 
are  not  dealt  with  seriously  unless  their  church  be 
required  to  have  lived  up  to  its  character,  and  have 
proved  it  through  its  works.  There  is  no  tribute  to  a 
man  or  institution  like  the  demand  that  he  or  it  be 
no  less  or  no  worse  than  his  or  its  claims.  Now,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say,  in  the  face  of  what  has  been 
said,  that  the  church  has  not  made  its  supernatural 
character  obvious  by  its  works ;  and  for  an  insti- 
tution that  must  be  supernatural  to  be  anything 
at  all,  this  is  certainly  a  serious  circumstance.  If 
its  character  and  claims  are  things  that  have  still, 
after  all  these  centuries  of  opportunity  and  endea- 
vour, to  be  proved  by  an  argumentative  and  eviden- 
tial process,  then  the  process  must  be  cogent  indeed, 
sufficient  at  least  to  satisfy  a  reason  both  scientific 
and  reverent.     An  age  which  deeply  reveres  good 


344 


things  well  done,  but  is  dubious  and  slow  of  con- 
viction as  to  high  abstract  claims,  is  a  trying  age 
for  a  system  or  a  society  whose  claims  are  mainly 
abstract,  and  whose  evidences  are  not  very  apparent 
in  the  realm  of  the  real. 

2.  If  the  church  is  to  serve  the  age,  it  must  be  by 
embodying  more  of  the  mind  and  ideal  of  the  Master. 
It  must  be  the  church  in  His  sense  and  for  His  ends. 
We  have  already  seen  something  of  the  claims  made 
by  the  Anglo-Catholics  on  behalf  of  the  church  as 
they  conceive  it.  It  is  Christ's  Spirit-bearing  body, 
"  the  special  and  covenanted  sphere  of  His  regular 
and  uniform  operations."  1  The  Church  has  a  finality 
which  belongs  to  its  very  essence,  "  expressed  in  the 
once  for  all  delivered  faith,  in  the  fulness  of  the  once 
for  all  given  grace,  in  the  Visible  Society  once  for  all 
instituted,"  "  and  in  a  once  for  all  empowered  and 
commissioned  ministry."2  By  virtue  of  the  first  it  is 
the  custodian  and  interpreter  of  the  truth  ;  by  virtue 
of  the  second  it  possesses  the  Sacraments,  which  are 
instruments  for  the  communication  of  grace  ;  because 
of  the  third  the  Church  is  a  political  unity  into  which 
man  must  be  incorporated  to  be  truly  and  effectually 
saved  ;  in  the  fourth  "the  instrument  of  unity"  is  sup- 
plied, "  and  no  man  can  share  her  (the  Church's) 
fellowship  except  in  acceptance  of  the  offices  of  her 
ministry." 3   Now,  of  these  the  last  is  the  greatest  and 

1  Lux  Mundi,  pp.  312,  322. 

2  The  Church  and  the  Ministry,  pp.  64,  65. 

3  Ibid.  p.  86. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD  AND  NEW  345 


most  essential.  Though  it  may  be  argued,  all  are  alike 
necessary  and  distinction  between  necessities  cannot 
be  drawn  ;  yet  here  this  distinction  exists,  the  apos- 
tolic ministry  is  the  condition  through  which  the  other 
things  are  ;  it  is  primary,  they  are  secondary  and 
sequent  ;  without  it  there  can  be  no  unity,  no  sacra- 
mental grace,  no  authoritative  transmission  and  defi- 
nition of  truth  ;  with  it  these  things  cannot  but  be. 

Now,  into  this  question  I  will  not  enter  further 
than  to  say  :  the  divine  right  of  a  clergy  is  no  more 
friendly  to  a  happy,  an  ordered,  an  efficient  church, 
than  is  the  divine  right  of  a  king  conducive  to  a  free 
and  progressive  State.  To  make  the  kingship  the 
constitutive  factor  of  a  State,  and  the  clergy  or  the 
episcopate  the  constitutive  factor  in  the  church,  is 
to  degrade  equally  the  ideas  of  Church  and  State. 
And  it  is  here  justified  by  assigning  to  the  clergy 
a  place  and  a  function  quite  unknown  to  the  New 
Testament.  "  There  is  a  most  exact  correspondence 
between  the  ministerial  office  and  the  nature  of  the 
religion,  or  the  offices  of  the  church  and  its  essential 
character.  Sacerdotalism  means  that  an  office  is 
conceived  to  be  so  sacrosanct,  and  so  necessary  to 
man's  worship  of  God,  and  God' s  access  to  man, 
that  without  it  there  can  be  no  perfect  worship  on  the 
one  side,  and  no  adequate  or  regular  communication 
of  life  on  the  other.  It  means  that  the  priest,  as 
a  priest,  and  not  as  a  person,  and  his  instruments 
as  his,  or  as  used  by  him,  are  the  only  authorized 
and  divinely  constituted  media  through  which  God 


346 


CATHOLICISM 


reaches  man  and  man  God,  or  through  which  the 
recognized  and  approved  intercourse  of  the  creature 
with  the  Creator  can  proceed.  Now,  in  the  New 
Testament  no  such  ideas  are  associated  with  the 
ministry,  or  with  any  person  appointed  to  it.  No 
man  bears  the  priest's  name,  or  professes  his  func- 
tions ;  the  studious  avoidance  of  the  name  by  men 
who  were  steeped  in  the  associations  of  sacerdotal 
worship  is  most  significant ;  and  so  is  the  care  with 
which  they  translate  sacerdotal  customs  and  ideas  into 
their  spiritual  antitypes.  The  [priesthood  ceases  to 
be  official  by  being  made  universal."  The  Christian 
society  is  a  priesthood,1  and  the  sacrifices  it  offers 
are  spiritual,2  the  living  man,3  the  gifts  and  bene- 
ficences which  are  acceptable  to  God,4  and  the  praise 
which  He  loves.5  The  temple  is  no  longer  the  build- 
ing where  the  priest  officiates,  conducts  his  proces- 
sions, and  indulges  in  his  ceremonial,  but  it  is  the 
Man 6  and  the  Society.7  The  virtues  enjoined  are 
not  of  the  old  sacerdotal  sort,  but  ethical,  inner, 
human — faith,  hope,  love,  the  obedience  that  is  so 
pleasing  to  God  because  so  helpful  to  man.  "  The  life 
of  the  communities  is  not  bound  by  any  priestly  rules 
or  observances,8  but  by  the  new  laws  of  love.  The 
Church  and  its  ministry,  therefore,  correspond  through- 
out ;  the  ministry  is  one  of  persuasion,  that  seeks  to 

1  Apoc.  i.  6  ;  v.  io  ;  xx.  6.      2  i  Pet.  ii.  5. 
"  Rom.  xii.  1  ;  Phil.  ii.  17.       4  Phil.  iv.  18  ;  Heb.  xiii.  16. 
5Heb.  xiii.  15.       0 1  Cor.  vi.  19.       7  1  Cor.  iii.  16,  17. 
8  Gal.  iv.  9,10;  Col.  ii.  16-23. 


ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD  AND  NEW  347 


move  the  will  through  the  conscience,  and  both  through 
the  reason  and  heart ;  that  cares  in  the  new  and 
gracious  way  of  brotherhood  for  the  poor,  the  sick,  the 
ignorant,  the  suffering,  the  sinful,  and  attempts  to 
help,  to  love,  to  win  by  sweet  reasonableness ;  while 
the  Church  is  a  society  which  seeks  to  realize  the 
beautiful  ideal  of  a  family  of  God,  or  a  household  of 
faith,  or  a  brotherhood  of  man.  There  is  no  place  for 
the  priest  or  his  office ;  his  sensuous  sanctities  are 
unknown,  and,  instead,  there  is  the  kingdom  of  God, 
and  the  endeavour  to  do  His  will.  The  rise  of  the 
sacerdotal  Orders  is  a  question  for  later  history ;  it 
marks  a  long  descent  from  the  Apostolic  age,  but  is 
certainly  no  thing  of  Apostolic  descent."  1 

Many  questions  remain  which  we  dare  not  here  and 
now  attempt  to  touch.  The  Church  lives,  and  moves, 
and  has  its  being  in  Christ ;  but  the  churches  have  as 
conditions  of  their  being  what  used  to  be  called  the 
pure  Word  of  God  and  the  Sacraments.  We  are 
strictly  within  the  lines  of  historical  truth  when  we 
say  that  without  the  Word  no  church  can  come  into 
being,  and  without  it  none  can  continue.  Every 
Apostolic  Church  was  created  by  the  preaching  of 
the  Word,  and  lived  only  as  the  creative  became  the 
preservative  agency.  As  to  the  Sacraments,  we  shall 
only  say,  once  they  became  the  acts  and  instruments 
of  a  priest  they  lost  their  original  sense,  and  were 
changed  from  the  possessions  and  seals  and  symbols 


1  The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  pp.  533,  534. 


343 


CA  TIIOLICISM 


of  the  community  into  the  appendices  and  articles 
of  an  office.  The  most  inveterate  schismatic  is  the 
person  or  the  party  that  draws  round  himself  or  itself 
a  circle,  and  says,  "  within  this  is  the  sphere  of 
God's  '  covenanted  mercies ' ;  all  without  is  the 
region  of  the  uncovenanted.  We  are  the  Catholic 
Church  ;  all  beyond  is  the  province  of  the  Sectaries 
and  the  Sects."  There  is  nothing  in  all  history  so 
intensely  schismatic  as  this  pseudo-Catholicism  ;  it  is 
the  vanity  of  the  Sectary  in  its  worst  possible  form. 
And  those  who  believe  that  the  Church  of  God  is  as 
broad  and  as  free  as  the  Mercy  of  God,  may  well  be 
forgiven  if  they  speak  plainly  and  frankly  about  any 
and  every  attempt  to  bind  it  to  a  provincial  polity, 
and  to  make  it  seem  less  large  and  less  gracious  than 
the  action  of  God  in  history  has  proved  it  to  be. 

March,  1890. 
February,  1891. 


VIII 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"1 
■^HE  appearance  of  the  statesman  as  a  theologian 


-I-  is  a  matter  of  interest  not  only  to  theologians, 
but  also  to  the  State.  It  speaks  of  interests  which 
have  all  the  greater  significance  for  this  world  that 
they  embrace  another  and  larger,  and  of  ideals  which 
are  potent  in  making  character  and  governing  both 
private  conduct  and  public  policy.  What  indeed 
distinguishes  the  statesman  from  the  man  of  affairs  is 
not  skill  in  the  expediencies  of  the  moment,  but  the 
possession  of  a  lofty  idealism.  Plato  has  told  us 
that  only  the  statesman  under  the  inspiration  of  the 
kingly  Muse  can  implant  in  the  souls  he  governs 
the  Idea,  which  is  a  divine  principle,  of  the  noble, 
and  the  just,  and  the  good  ;  while  not  till  philosophers 
were  kings,  and  political  power  was  wedded  to 
philosophy,  could  his  ideal  city  live  and  behold  the 
light  of  the  sun.  Aristotle  was  doubtful  whether 
kings  were  an  advantage  to  States,  but  he  was  clear 
that  they  ought  to  be  chosen  for  their  merit,  or 

1  The  Foundations  of  Belief ;  being  Notes  Introductory  to  the 
Study  of  Theology.  By  the  Right  Hon.  Arthur  James  Balfour. 
London  :  Longmans.  1895. 

349 


350 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


personal  life  and  conduct :  while  the  statesman  might 
be  considered  as  much  a  lover  of  virtue  as  the 
philosopher,  since  it  was  the  note  alike  of  the  wise 
State  and  wise  man  to  regulate  life  according  to  the 
best  end.  It  is  well  now  and  then  to  be  recalled  to 
the  ancient  idea  that  the  State  is,  alike  in  basis  and 
aim,  essentially  an  ethical  society ;  and  that  virtue 
and  ethical  knowledge  in  the  statesman  are  necessary 
to  order  and  progress  in  the  State.  Our  tendency  for 
the  moment  is  to  substitute  material  for  moral  well- 
being,  to  conceive  comfort  as  the  highest  good  and 
poverty  as  the  last  evil.  To  be  poor  or  to  endure 
hardness  is  to  be  thought  incapable  of  being  personally 
happy  or  of  contributing  to  the  common  happiness. 
If  Diogenes  were  to  appear  among  us  with  his  tub, 
he  would  be  told  that  before  he  could  be  heard  or  be 
regarded  as  other  than  an  object  of  charity,  he  must 
have  a  more  desirable  dwelling,  exchange  his  sack  for 
respectable  broad-cloth,  and  demand  of  Alexander 
not  only  that  he  get  out  of  the  sun,  but  actually  dispel 
the  smoke  or  the  fog  that  was  intercepting  its  beams. 
If  Epictetus  were  to  set  up  as  a  teacher  of  morals,  he 
would  be  assured  that  he  could  not  be  a  philosopher 
while  he  continued  a  slave,  or  think  worthily  while 
his  labour  was  another's.  We  ought,  then,  to  wel- 
come a  book  which  shows  us  that  we  have  a  states- 
man who  at  least  thinks  as  deeply  of  ethical  as  of 
material  well-being,  and  who  spends  his  quiet  days 
not  simply  on  brown  moors  or  breezy  links,  but  in 
attempting  to  lay  anew,  broad  and  deep  and  strong 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  351 


"  the  foundations  "  of  the  beliefs  on  which  he  con- 
ceives society  to  rest. 

§  I.  The  Statesman  as  Divine 
I.  It  does  not  indeed  always  follow  that  the  states- 
man who  studies  theology  either  applies  his  religion 
to  the  State  or  serves  it  by  his  studies.  We  all 
remember  Gibbon's1  famous  aphorism  as  to  "the 
various  modes  of  worship  which  prevailed  in  the 
Roman  world  "  being  "  considered  by  the  people,  as 
equally  true ;  by  the  philosopher,  as  equally  false  ; 
and  by  the  magistrate,  as  equally  useful."  But  if  the 
philosopher  chanced  to  be  also  a  magistrate,  his  use 
of  the  religion  he  held  to  be  false  was  more  a  tribute 
to  the  expediencies  of  government  than  to  the  in- 
tegrity of  philosophy.  Cicero,  too,  as  orator  and 
statesman,  praised  the  popular  religion,  and  played 
the  role  of  sincere  believer,  fervently  recounting  the 
miracles  it  had  accomplished  on  behalf  of  himself  and 
the  Republic  ;  but  as  a  philosopher  we  find  him  in 
his  treatises  flouting  this  same  religion  with  lordly 
disdain.  Marcus  Aurelius  appears  in  his  Medita- 
tions as  the  typical  Roman  saint,  the  ideal  man  of 
the  Stoics  embodied  in  breathing  flesh  and  blood  ;  but 
he  stands  in  history  as  one  of  the  chief  persecutors  of 
the  Christian  Church,  leaving  to  us  the  hard  problem 
of  reconciling  the  tolerant  philosopher  with  the  in- 
tolerant Emperor.  In  the  long  roll  of  English  kings 
two  stand  out  as  eminent  and  learned  theologians, 
Henry  VIII.  and  James  I.    To  the  former  we  owe, 


1  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  ii.  t. 


352 


CA  THOLICISM 


among  other  things,  the  famous  book  against  Luther, 
the  Assertio  Septem  Sacramentoruw,  which  procured 
for  its  author  and  his  successors  the  proud  title  of 
"  Fidei  Defensor  "  ;  to  the  latter,  among  other  things, 
the  Basilikon  Doron,  which  declared  that  he  hated 
"  no  man  more  than  a  proud  Puritan " — a  being 
no  king  could  suffer,  unless  indeed  "  for  trying  of 
his  patience,  as  Socrates  did  an  evil  wife" — and 
the  Apology  for  the  Oath  of  Allegiance,  which  ex- 
plained his  theory  of  kingcraft  in  the  province  of 
religion.  But  he  would  be  a  bold  man  who  should 
assert  of  Henry  that  he  was  one  of  the  most  just  and 
magnanimous  of  kings,  or  of  James  that  he  was  one 
of  the  wisest.  Still  there  is  no  principle  which 
English  history  more  illustrates  than  this,  that 
problems,  even  in  passing  politics,  are  best  under- 
stood when  looked  at  in  the  light  of  large  ideas  and 
high  aims.  If  we  are  unable  to  name  Bacon  a  states- 
man, yet  we  cannot  forget  that  he  was  the  most 
eminent  English  philosopher  of  his  day, — to  say,  as 
some  have  said,  of  all  time,  is  to  speak  foolishly. 
Clarendon,  once  chancellor  of  the  kingdom,  has  given 
us  a  history,  not  unconcerned  with  church  and 
religion,  that  will  live  as  long  as  the  English  tongue. 
Last  century  Bolingbroke  discoursed  through  five 
prolix  volumes  on  sundry  matters,  philosophical  and 
theological,  including  such  congenial  themes  as  "  the 
folly  and  presumption  of  philosophers,  especially  in 
matters  of  the  first  philosophy,"  and  "  authority  in 
matters  of  religion ; "  and  "Alexander  Pope,  Esquire," 


"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  353 


to  whom  the  essays  and  letters  were  addressed,  did 
the  system  of  his  "  friend  and  genius,"  the  "  master 
of  the  poet  and  the  song,"  into  the  polished  measure 
and  empty  optimism  of  the  Essay  on  Man.  But, 
though  Bolingbroke  professed  deism  and  upheld  the 
church,  yet  we  may  reckon  it  among  the  kind  things 
of  Providence  that  he  had  not  the  opportunity  of 
realizing  his  "  Idea  of  a  Patriot  King,"  or  maintain- 
ing as  a  statesman  the  church  he  did  not  believe 
in  as  a  man.  In  this  century,  statecraft  and  theology 
have  often  gone  hand  in  hand.  In  France,  Joseph 
de  Maistre  led  the  counter-revolution,  and  evoked 
the  papacy  as  the  spirit  which  was  to  reduce  to 
order  the  chaos  of  loose  and  lawless  wills  ;  the  Due 
de  Broglie  described  the  early,  that  he  might  inform 
and  defend  the  living,  church  ;  Guizot,  when  relieved 
by  the  Second  Empire  from  the  service  of  the  citizen 
king,  occupied  himself  with  the  interpretation  of 
Evangelical  Christianity  and  the  revival  of  French 
Protestantism  ;  while  Jules  Simon  had  edited  Des- 
cartes, and  vindicated  La  Religion  Naturelle,  before 
he  was  known  as  a  politician  and  minister.  Nearer 
ourselves  stand  statesmen  who  were  scholars,  and 
minded  the  affairs  of  the  State  all  the  better  that 
they  did  not  neglect  their  own  studies.  We  remem- 
ber that  one  English  Prime  Minister  of  Queen 
Victoria  translated  Homer  ;  another,  the  "  little  great 
man  "  who  "  knew  that  he  was  right " — Earl  Russell, 
— was  almost  as  active  in  literature  as  in  politics  ; 
a  third,  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  the  author  of  some 


354 


CATHOLICISM 


of  the  cleverest,  most  brilliant,  audacious,  and  ma- 
licious novels  of  the  time  ;  but  novels  as  they  were, 
they  were  yet  full  of  social,  political,  and  ecclesias- 
tical theory.  And  to-day  the  most  venerable  of 
English  statesmen  has  also  been  throughout  his  long 
life  an  eager  and  prolific  theologian.  He  began  his 
career  as  a  sort  of  lay  divine,  claiming  for  his  church 
a  higher  place,  more  independent  authority  and  in- 
defeasible rights,  than  even  her  official  heads  had 
then  either  the  courage  or  the  faith  to  affirm.  In  his 
maturer  manhood  classical  studies  absorbed  him, 
and  we  had  those  delightful  excursions  into  the 
world  of  Homer  and  the  Homeric  poems,  which 
were  all  the  more  instructive  that  they  were  in 
character  so  entirely  distinct  from  the  performances 
of  the  mere  scholar.  If  he  had  not  what  the 
youngest  scholar  thought  the  only,  because  the 
newest,  scientific  method  of  inquiry  into  the  date, 
the  composition,  the  authorship,  and  the  mythology 
of  the  Homeric  poems,  he  yet  showed  an  unrivalled 
mastery  of  the  text  and  a  familiarity  with  the  world 
it  described  and  illustrated,  which  was  all  his  own. 
And  now  in  his  later  days  he  returns — though  one 
may  say  from  a  maturer  and  higher  point  of  view — 
to  his  earlier  interests.  It  is  less  the  political  form 
and  idea  of  religion,  and  more  the  metaphysical  and 
ethical  contents — i.e.,  the  truth  of  it — that  interest 
him.  There  is  a  certain  fitness  in  the  man  who 
began  his  life  as  an  apologist  for  a  given  theory  of 
the  church  in  the  State,  ending  his  life  as  the  editor 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  355 


of  the  greatest  of  all  the  apologies  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion ever  written  in  the  English  tongue.  And  now, 
just  as  many  have  been  feeling  how  the  withdrawal 
of  a  mind  accustomed  to  study  the  State  through 
the  large  and  luminous  atmosphere  of  religion,  had 
impoverished  politics,  a  younger  statesman  descends 
into  the  arena  and  boldly  challenges  attention  and 
criticism  by  his  Notes  Introductory  to  the  Study  of 
Theology.  And  what  can  a  theologian  do  but  ask, 
Whither  does  this  Introduction  lead — into  theology  ? 
or  whither  ? 

2.  Mr.  Balfour  here  repeats  and  expands  his  older 
book,1  developing  and  applying  its  principles.  And 
we  may  at  once  say,  the  old  book  is  the  best  intro- 
duction to  the  new,  and  is,  indeed,  necessary  to  its 
complete  elucidation.  The  new  work  is  distinguished 
by  many  admirable  qualities,  is  at  once  lucid  and 
subtle,  brilliant  and  eloquent,  always  grave,  yet  often 
lighted  up  with  flashes  of  a  nimble  though  ironical 
humour,  with  a  delicate  yet  elastic  style,  excellently 
suited  to  the  deft  and  sinuous  movement  of  the 
thought.  If  to  be  well  put  were  to  be  victoriously 
argued,  this  would  indeed  be  a  cogent  book ;  but  I 
must  frankly,  even  at  the  very  outset,  confess  that  to 
one  reader  at  least  it  has  been  a  deep  disappoint- 
ment. The  early  chapters  awakened  high  hope ; 
their  form  threw  over  one  a  sort  of  spell ;  but  the 


1  A  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt :  being  an  Essay  on  the 
Foundations  of  Belief  1879. 


356 


CA  TH0L1C1SM 


spell  slowly  faded,  and  pleasure  turned  to  pain,  as  the 
underlying  philosophy  was  seen  to  be  shifting  sand 
rather  than  solid  rock,  and  what  could  its  unstable 
weakness  do  but  fracture  the  whole  frail  superstruc- 
ture ?  The  farther  the  reading  proceeded,  the  less 
satisfactory  the  argument  seemed.  The  criticism 
that  had  appeared  so  pleasantly  potent  at  the  begin- 
ning, became  sadly  impotent  at  the  middle,  and  mis- 
chievously inadequate  or  irrelevant  at  the  end.  This 
was  a  conclusion  most  reluctantly  reached ;  but 
whether  justly  reached,  it  will  be  for  the  readers  of 
both  the  book  and  this  essay  to  determine. 

It  is,  I  hope,  not  necessary  to  say  how  thoroughly 
I  sympathize  with  Mr.  Balfour's  purpose,  and  how 
entirely  I  admire  the  motives  of  his  book  and  the 
ability  by  which  it  is  everywhere  distinguished.  As 
one  whose  work  and  interests  lie  altogether  in  the  do- 
main of  theology,  I  would  welcome  the  incursion  into 
it  of  this  brilliant  amateur.  For  so  far  as  it  relates  to 
theology,  properly  so-called,  it  is  an  amateur's  book, 
and  as  such  it  ought  to  be  judged.  It  is  difficult,  for 
example,  to  conceive  that  any  one  whose  knowledge 
was  first-hand,  especially  if  possessed  of  a  philosophic 
and  scientific  mind,  could  have  written  the  note  on 
pp.  278-9  as  to  the  decisions  of  the  early  Church 
relative  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  The  very 
thing  that  the  creeds  were  not,  was  "  the  negation  of 
explanations."  They  were  framed  by  men  who  had 
elaborated  doctrines  which  were  theories  concerning 
the  highest  mysteries,  and  their  decisions  were  defi- 


"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  357 


nitions  which  were  expressly  intended  to  affirm  their 
own  and  exclude  other  and  opposed  doctrines.  The 
symbols  both  of  Nicaia,  and  Chalcedon  are  distin- 
guished by  terms  as  strictly  technical  as  any  terms 
in  either  philosophy  or  science  ;  and,  indeed,  the 
great  struggle  at  Nicaia,  which  it  needed  all  the 
subtlety  of  Athanasius  and  all  the  authority  of  the 
Emperor  to  overcome,  was  against  the  introduction 
into  a  symbol  of  terms  and  phrases  which  had  been 
coined  and  used  in  the  schools,  but  had  not  hitherto 
been  sanctioned  by  the  Church.  In  other  words,  the 
terms  were  exactly  what  Mr.  Balfour  says  they  were 
not — "  of  the  nature  of  explanations  "  ;  they  expressed 
theories,  embodied  definitions,  affirmed  one  doctrine 
and  denied  another,  and  were  for  this  very  reason 
introduced,  and  for  the  same  reason  strenuously 
resisted.  But  if  in  historical  theology  he  shows  the 
mind  and  art  of  the  amateur,  it  must  not  be  under- 
stood to  mean  that  his  appearance  as  a  philosophical 
theologian  is  held  to  be  unwarranted.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  is  no  field  of  inquiry  where  a  fresh  and 
well-disciplined  mind  may  be  of  more  real  service, 
especially  if  he  be  in  thought  and  language  neither 
derivative  nor  conventional.  And  there  are  sections 
or  borders  of  the  field  where  a  man  of  Mr.  Balfour's 
knowledge  and  speculative  capacity  is  absolutely  in 
place  ;  and  it  is  with  such  a  section  that  his  book  is 
mainly  concerned.  The  men  who  are  in  this  field,  as 
it  were,  common  day  labourers,  may  well  feel  cheered 
and  exhilarated  at  the  appearance  amongst  them  of 
an  occasional  workman  so  effective  in  form  and  so 


358 


CA  THOLICISM 


dexterous  in  the  use  of  his  tools  as  is  this  last  comer, 
who  so  happily  combines  the  capacities  of  the  philo- 
sopher and  the  statesman. 

Mr.  Balfour  well  defines  his  initial  position,  which 
also  implies  the  function  he  is  best  able  to  fulfil,  in 
the  sentence :  "  The  decisive  battles  of  theology  are 
fought  beyond  its  frontiers.  It  is  not  over  purely 
religious  controversies  that  the  cause  of  religion  is 
lost  or  won.  The  judgments  we  shall  form  on  its 
special  problems  are  commonly  settled  for  us  by  our 
general  mode  of  looking  at  the  Universe."  1  This, 
of  course,  means  that  theology  is  implicit  in  philo- 
sophy, or  philosophy  explicit  in  theology.  As  the 
late  Sir  William  Hamilton  used  to  say,  every  question 
which  emerges  in  theology  has  before  emerged  in 
philosophy.  So  the  philosopher  can  render  no  greater 
service  to  theology  than  the  discussion  in  his  own 
free  way  and  province  of  those  principles  which 
determine  its  problems.  But  I  wonder  that  Mr. 
Balfour  failed  to  feel  how  fatal  to  his  theological 
purpose  is  his  want  of  an  explicit  philosophy.  With- 
out a  positive  philosophy  how  is  a  positive  theology 
possible  ?  The  "  mode  of  looking  at  the  universe h 
which  is  to  determine  our  attitude  to  theology,  will 
not  be  created  by  a  negative  criticism  of  philosophical 
or  scientific  ideas ;  this  is  more  likely  to  leave  us  in 
an  attitude  of  vacant  expectancy,  where  perception  is 
blind  and  conception  empty,  than  in  one  of  intelligent 
receptivity.    One  may  deeply  sympathize  with  Mr. 


1  The  Foundations  of  Belief,  pp.  2,  3. 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF" 


359 


Balfour's  purpose,  and  be  all  the  more  deeply  regret- 
ful that  he  has,  by  his  peculiar  method,  done  so  much 
to  defeat  it.  But  this  is  to  anticipate  a  criticism 
which  has  still  to  be  made  good. 

The  book,  though  divided  into  four  parts,  really 
falls  into  three  main  divisions,  which  we  may  dis- 
tinguish as  the  critical,  the  transitional,  and  the 
positive  or  constructive.  In  the  critical,  Mr.  Balfour 
discusses  and  dismisses  as  philosophically  inadequate 
both  the  empirical  and  the  transcendental  theories  of 
knowing  and  being,  especially  as  regards  those  ideas 
which  are  held  to  be  the  assured  and  necessary  prin- 
ciples for  the  interpretation  of  man  and  nature.  In 
the  transitional  he  discovers  and  emphasizes  what  he 
holds  to  be  a  group  of  neglected  factors  in  the  forma- 
tion of  belief.  In  the  positive,  he  attempts  a  pro- 
visional justification  and  unification  of  beliefs.  What 
is  to  be  here  said  will  deal  with  these  three  divisions 
in  succession. 

§  II.  The  Critical  Philosopher  as  Positive  Theologian 

I.  The  critical  discussion,  which  runs  irregularly 
through  the  entire  book,  though  it  is  more  systemati- 
cally dealt  with  in  Parts  I.  and  II.,  is  applied  to  four 
provinces — two  philosophical,  empiricism  and  trans- 
cendental idealism — and  two  theological,  the  older 
rationalism  and  its  corrective  yet  counterpart,  the 
older  apologetic  and  rationalistic  orthodoxy.  The 
latter  two  need  not  concern  us,  though  they  are 
perhaps   more  kindly  handled  than  as  tendencies 


36o 


CA  THOLICISM 


historically  effete  they  altogether  deserved  to  be. 
Nor  need  we  concern  ourselves  with  the  discussion  on 
Transcendental  Idealism.  It  is  not  very  serious  and 
in  no  respect  thorough,  nor  is  it  marked  by  the 
author's  usual  subtlety  and  grasp ;  while  it  really 
stands  outside  the  argument,  which  has  not  been 
"  arranged "  "  with  overt  or  tacit  reference  to  that 
system"  (p.  6).  Only  two  things  need  be  said:  (i) 
Mr.  Balfour  fails  to  recognize  the  conspicuous  services 
this  Idealism  has  rendered  to  the  cause  he  champions  ; 
and  the  recognition  might  very  well  have  been  as- 
sociated with  the  name  of  the  late  Professor  T.  H. 
Green,  whose  position  is  mainly  here  criticized.  To 
see  what  these  services  have  been,  we  have  only  to 
remember  the  controversies  of  from  twenty  to  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  when,  under  the  impulse  given  to 
pamphysicism  by  evolution,  agnosticism  became 
belligerent  and  constructive  ;  and  the  doctrine  that 
"  matter  had  the  promise  and  potency  of  every  form 
and  quality  of  life,"  was  preached  with  eloquent 
assurance  from  the  chair  of  the  British  Association — 
and  then  compare  that  most  electrical  atmosphere 
with  the  very  different  "  psychological  climate "  we 
now  enjoy.  If  to-day  our  empirics  cultivate  a 
modesty  which  was  then  unknown,  if  they  are  more 
conscious  of  the  limitations  and  impotence  of  their 
physico-metaphysical  theories,  it  is  largely  due  to  the 
criticism  of  the  Idealism  which  is  here  so  cavalierly 
dismissed.  (2)  This  Idealism  is  not  to  be  understood 
from  the  subjective  point  of  view  emphasized  by  Mr. 


"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  36 1 


Balfour.  He  fails  to  apprehend  its  objective  signifi- 
cance, its  ability  to  explain  those  problems  in  the 
history  of  mind  which  remain  in  his  hands  the  most 
hopeless  of  puzzles.  The  one  philosophy  which  has 
done  even  approximate  justice  to  the  religions  of  man 
and  the  nature  by  which  they  are,  certainly  deserved 
juster  treatment  in  a  book  concerned  with  the 
"  foundations  of  belief."  It  reveals,  at  least,  an  im- 
perfect sense  of  the  gravity  and  range  of  the  most 
serious  attempt  yet  made  to  solve  these  problems. 

2.  But  the  author's  serious  and  perfectly  tireless 
criticism  is  concentrated  on  what  he  terms  "  Natural- 
ism." 1  His  dexterity  in  dealing  with  it  is  mar- 
vellous ;  he  argues  against  it,  he  examines  its  psy- 
chological data,  analyzes  its  logical  principles  and 
jirocesses,  tests  it  by  man,  measures  it  by  nature,  and 
finds  it,  in  all  its  fundamental  doctrines,  either  impos- 
sible, or  unveracious,  or  self-contradictory.  Its  creed 
is  composed  of  two  elements  :  "  The  one  positive, 
consisting,  broadly  speaking,  of  the  teaching  con- 
tained in  the  general  body  of  the  natural  sciences ; 
the  other  negative,  expressed  in  the  doctrine  that 
beyond  these  limits,  wherever  they  may  happen  to  lie, 
nothing  is,  and  nothing  can  be,  known."2  One  would 
have  expected  him  to  be  rather  more  careful  in  his 
definition.  What  is  here  described  as  the  positive 
element  does  not  belong  to  Naturalism  in  any  special 
or  even  in  any  tolerable  sense  at  all ;  and  what  is 
termed   the   negative   is   really  the   only  positive 


2  P-  92. 


3^2 


CATHOLICISM 


element.  For  what  constitutes  "  Naturalism  "  but  the 
affirmation  that  beyond  the  limits  of  nature,  as  it 
exists  to  sense,  "  nothing  is,  and  nothing  can  be, 
known  "  ?  The  "  Natural  Sciences  "  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it ;  it  existed  before  they  were  as  they 
are  now ;  they  exist  now  where  it  is  denied  ;  it 
exists  to-day  where  they  are  known  only  in 
part.1  Nobody  knows  better  than  Mr.  Balfour 
that  the  most  distinguished  names  in  Natural  Science 
are  those  of  men  as  averse  to  "  Naturalism  "  as  he 
himself  is.  And  this  double  definition  was  an  argu- 
mentative as  well  as  an  historical  blunder ;  it  forces 
him  to  become,  as  it  were,  a  scientific  agnostic,  in 
order  that  he  may  the  better  refute  metaphysical 
agnosticism ;  and  to  become  a  fictitious  character  is 
certainly  not  the  most  effectual  way  of  ending  fiction. 
Nor  is  he  a  happy  warrior  who  in  battle  strikes  at 
friends  as  well  as  foes ;  in  the  result  he  may  slay 
what  he  most  of  all  wishes  to  save  alive. 

The  Naturalism  he  thus  defines  he  discusses  from 
two  points  of  view :  the  personal  and  practical,  and 
the  psychological  and  speculative.  Under  the  first 
aspect,  he  shows  its  insufficiency  to  man  as  an  ethical, 
aesthetic,  and  rational  being.  This  is,  to  my  thinking, 
his  far  most  satisfactory  piece  of  work ;  for  it  I  have 
nothing  but  praise.  In  Part  I.,  which  deals  with  it, 
his  dialectical  and  literary  qualities  are  seen  at  their 

1  That  Mr.  Balfour  is  perfectly  well  aware  of  the  distinction 
is  obvious  (see  p.  134);  but  in  his  reasoning  he  often  allows  it 
to  seem  as  if  he  forgot  it. 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF" 


363 


best.  Under  the  second  aspect  he  shows  that  Nat- 
uralism is  psychologically  unjustified  and  specula- 
tively incoherent ;  its  theory  of  knowing  contradicts 
its  theory  of  being.  His  arguments  are  not  new ; 
they  are  the  commonplaces  of  transcendental  criti- 
cism ;  but  they  are  vigorously  put  and  strikingly 
illustrated  and  applied.  The  experience  which  sup- 
plies Naturalism  with  its  premisses,'js  not  a  thing  of 
nature  ; 1  nor  are  these  premisses  in  the  strict  sense 
true  to  nature.  "  The  most  immediate  experiences 
carry  with  them  no  inherent  guarantee  of  their  vera- 
city." "  Habitual  inaccuracy  "  attends  "  the  cognitive 
leap  through  perception  to  object."  "Our  perceptions, 
regarded  as.  psychological  results,"  are,  "  regarded  as 
sources  of  information,  not  merely  occasionally  in- 
accurate, but  habitually  mendacious." 2  As  a  con- 
sequence, "  science  owes  its  being  to  an  erroneous 
view  as  to  what  kind  of  information  it  is  that  our 
experiences  directly  convey  to  us." 3  Nay,  more, 
"  Out  of  a  succession  of  individual  experiences,  such 
a  fundamental  scientific  principle  as  causation  cannot 
be  "  reasonably  extracted."  4  The  conclusion  there- 
fore is — "  A  philosophy  which  depends  for  its  pre- 
misses in  the  last  resort  upon  the  particulars  revealed 


1  p.  108.       2  p.  111. 

3  p.  118.  Cf.  Philosophic  Doubt,  p.  287.  "Science  is  a  sys- 
tem of  belief  which,  for  anything  we  can  allege  to  the  contrary, 
is  wholly  without  proof.  The  inferences  by  which  it  is  arrived 
at  are  erroneous  ;  the  premisses  on  which  it  rests  are  un- 
proved." *  p.  1 19. 


364  CA  THOLICISM 

to  us  in  perceptive  experience  alone,  is  one  that 
cannot  rationally  be  accepted."  1 

Now,  why  this  elaborate  analysis  and  refutation  of 
empiricism  ?  It  serves  various  ends,  negative  and 
positive.  It  is  only  by  "an  effectual  criticism  of 
empiricism "  that  Naturalism  can  be  effectually  de- 
stroyed,2 and  the  admission  compelled  that  we  are 
I  "  as  yet  without  a  satisfactory  philosophy."  3  Doubts 
are  started  "as  to  the  theoretic  validity  of  certain  uni- 
versally accepted  beliefs,"  4  in  order  that  a  scientific 
standard  may  cease  to  be  used  as  "  sole  test  of  truth."  a 
Beliefs  that  are  so  open  to  doubt  cannot  be  logically 
held  to  make  other  beliefs  doubtful ;  the  weapon 
sceptical  criticism  has  blunted,  has  lost  its  power  to 
kill  or  even  to  wound.  The  result  is  that  our  ethical 
and  religious  ideas  have  nothing  to  fear  at  the  hands 
of  those  termed  scientific  ;  their  provinces  differ,  and, 
as  regards  the  right  to  be,  the  one  class  has  no  ad- 
vantage over  the  other.  They  are  in  many  respects 
parallel,  yet,  in  a  sense,  inter-independent.  "  Philoso- 
phic Doubt "  as  to  "  an  independent  outer  world  "  is 
possible  ;  but  "  for  all  practical  purposes  "  the  belief  in 
it  "  should  be  accepted  with  a  credence  which  is  im- 
mediate and  unwavering."  G  Similarly  doubt  may  be 
possible  as  to  theological  and  ethical  beliefs  ;  yet  they 
ought  to  be  accepted  as  necessary  to  the  satisfaction 
of  human  needs  and  the  regulation  of  conduct.  Both 


1  P-  133-     2  P-  134-     3  PP-  246,  247-     4  P-  246. 
5  p.  235.      6  p.  238. 


-THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF'' 


365 


classes  of  belief  are  alike  "  symbolic  " ;  "  the  world 
as  represented  to  us  by  science,  can  no  more  be  per- 
ceived or  imagined  than  the  Deity  as  represented  by 
theology."  1  Our  idea  of  Deity  is  no  more  anthro- 
pomorphic than  our  idea  of  the  external  world.2 
Our  knowledge  of  matter  is  no  more  direct  than  our 
knowledge  of  Deity.3  So  ideas  that  are  alike  sym- 
bolic and  alike  open  to  sceptical  criticism  agree  in  a 
kind  of  unity  ;  neither  can  claim  pre-eminence  or  be 
used  to  discredit  or  disprove  the  other. 

3.  The  cogency  of  the  criticism  is  undeniable ;  its 
usefulness,  within  limits  and  properly  balanced  and 
qualified,  may  be  undoubted  ;  but  what  precisely  does 
it  accomplish  in  Mr.  Balfour's  hands,  and  how  does 
it  serve  his  purpose  in  regard  to  the  "  foundations  of 
belief"  ?  He  himself  recognizes  its  thoroughly  scepti- 
cal character,  not  only  so  far  as  empirical  theory  but 
even  so  far  as  fundamental  scientific  ideas  are  con- 
cerned.4 His  two  books  are  indeed  models  of  mor- 
dant scepticism.  He  has  said  of  his  earlier  book 
that  "  the  title  has  attracted  more  interest  than  the 
contents,"5  but  the  title  is  hardly  just  to  the  contents 
or  their  interest.  It  is  not  so  much  a  "defence  of 
philosophic  doubt  "  as  critical  doubt  of  all  the  philo- 
sophies. These  two  are  not  only  different,  but  almost 
opposite  things  ;  "  philosophic  doubt "  is  more  posi- 


1  Philosophic  Doubt,  p.  245.     1  lb.,  p.  246.     3  lb.,  p.  258. 

4  B.,  pp.  245,  246  ;  cf.  Philosophic  Doubt,  pp.  287,  293. 

5  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  284. 


366 


CATHOLICISM 


tive  in  character  than  doubt  of  philosophy.  Hume  is 
the  typical  exponent  of  "  philosophic  doubt,"  but  he 
is  in  some  respects  much  more  positive  and  even 
constructive  than  Mr.  Balfour.  He  accepted  the 
current  philosophical  doctrine  of  his  day :  Locke's 
"ideas  of  sensation,"  Berkeley's  "ideas  of  sense,"  were 
his  "  impressions";  while,  we  may  add  in  passing,  the 
familiar  "phenomena"  of  our  contemporary  thought, 
and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  "vivid  manifestations  of 
the  unknown,"  may  be  regarded  as  their  living  repre- 
sentatives, if  not  strict  equivalents.  Locke's  "  ideas 
of  reflection,"  Berkeley's  "  ideas  of  imagination,"  were 
Hume's  "  ideas,"  which  were  echoes  or  reminiscences 
of  the  impression,  true  in  the  measure  that  they  re* 
peated  it,  false  in  the  degree  they  omitted  any  feature 
of  their  original.  Now,  Hume  did  not  trouble  him- 
self with  Descartes'  speculative  deduction  of  being 
from  thought,  with  his  innate  ideas  and  occasional 
causes  ;  nor  with  Spinoza's  substance  with  its  two 
attributes  of  extension  and  thought ;  nor  with  Leib- 
nitz's monads  and  pre-established  harmony,  or  his 
pregnant  hint  that  the  intellect  was  needed  to  interpret 
the  impressions  which  the  senses  conveyed  in  from 
without.  On  the  contrary,  he  resolutely  left  philoso- 
phical criticism  alone  ;  and,  assuming  the  premisses  of 
the  home  or  native  philosophy,  turned  to  the  problem 
they  set  him.  He  saw  quite  as  clearly  as  our  author 
sees,  that  if  "  impressions  "  were  ultimate,  the  origin 
of  all  knowledge  and  its  only  authentic  elements, 
then  those  fundamental  beliefs  by  which  we  inter- 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF''1  367 


preted  both  man  and  nature  had  no  warrant  in 
reason.  Every  "  impression  "  was  of  a  single  or  in- 
dividual thing,  a  subjective  experience  which  could 
tell  nothing  of  the  reality  or  nature  of  the  objective 
world,  its  system  or  coherence,  its  causation  or  con- 
tinuity, or  of  the  continued  personal  being  of  the 
subjective.  What  caused  and  what  experienced  the 
"  impressions  "  were  alike  unknown  :  nor  were  we 
endowed  by  nature  with  any  faculty  or  instrument 
sufficient  for  their  discovery.  But  Hume  was  at  once 
too  subtle  and  too  speculative  to  remain  satisfied  with 
so  purely  negative  a  conclusion  ;  and  so  he  boldly 
essayed  to  explain  how  beliefs  that  had  no  warrant 
from  nature  yet  naturally  came  to  be.  His  problem 
was  twofold  :  How  did  a  fleeting  succession  of  sub- 
jective "  impressions "  come  to  suggest  and  to  seem 
a  permanent  and  ordered  outer  world  ?  And  how 
could  a  stream  of  ideas  in  perpetual  flux,  and  suc- 
ceeding each  other  with  inconceivable  rapidity,  come 
to  bear  the  appearance  of  a  continuous  personal  and 
conscious  self?  The  solution  lay  in  the  mystic  words 
"  association  "  and  "  custom  "  ;  association  was  per- 
sonal, individual,  the  tendency  to  join  together  in 
thought  things  perceived  together  in  sense,  to  con- 
ceive as  inseparable,  objects  invariably  associated  in 
perception;  but  custom  was  collective  —  association 
worked  into  a  habit  at  once  common  and  personal. 
Now,  Hume's  scepticism,  so  construed,  cannot,  what- 
ever we  may  think  of  its  intellectual  or  philosophical 
validity,  be  denied  a  positive  character.    His  forma- 


368 


CA  THOLICISM 


tion  of  ideas  or  beliefs  by  association  or  custom, 
whether  arbitrary,  illicit,  or  accidental,  was  a  philoso- 
phic theory  of  knowledge  adapted  to  a  special,  though 
current  and  common,  psychology.  His  speculative 
sincerity  may  be  doubted,  even  when  his  speculative 
genius  is  admired  ; 1  but  his  philosophy  was  a  theory 
intended  to  account  for  beliefs  which,  however  unreal, 
had  all  the  appearance  and  served  all  the  purposes  of 
realities.  But  Mr.  Balfour,  while  more  critical,  is  less 
positive  than  Hume.  He  may  not  be  sceptical  in  his 
results  ;  but  he  is  so  much  so  in  his  argumentative 
process  as  to  leave  us  without  any  premisses  that 
can  justify  his  conclusions.  His  book  is  the  work  of 
a  man  who  has  "always  found  it  easier  to  satisfy  him- 
self of  the  insufficiency  of  Naturalism  than  of  the 
absolute  sufficiency  of  any"  other  system  of  thought;  2 
and  what  he  gives  is  cogent  destructive  criticism, 
unredressed  by  any  equally  cogent  constructive  argu- 
ment. In  other  words,  he  vindicates  his  own  prin- 
ciples by  invalidating  those  of  other  people ;  but  he 
does  not  explicate  or  justify  the  principles  on  which 
he  builds  his  superstructure,  or  discover  the  basis  on 
which  they  ultimately  rest.  Hume  was  sceptical  both 
in  his  premisses  and  in  his  conclusion,  though  positive 
in  his  method  ;  but  Mr.  Balfour,  though  positive  in 
his  conclusion,  is  negative  in  his  method,  and  un- 
critical as  to  his  premisses.     He  dismisses,  by  a 


1  Foundations  of  Belief  p.  96.  Cf.  Philosophic  Doubt,  pp. 
85,  86.  2  Foundations  of  Belief  p.  92. 


'■THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  369 


searching  critical  process,  our  current  philosophies, 
empirical  and  transcendental ;  then  confesses  he  has 
no  effectual  substitute  to  offer ;  and  finally  offers  a 
provisional  theory  for  the  unification  of  beliefs  which 
throws  into  the  most  startling  relief  all  the  sceptical 
elements  in  his  own  criticism. 

4.  This  criticism  need  not  perhaps  be  further  elabo- 
rated, but  it  is  necessary  that  its  precise  point  and 
purpose  be  not  missed.  There  is  no  complaint  that 
Mr.  Balfour's  criticism  of  empiricism  is  destructive ; 
the  more  thorough  he  can  make  it  in  this  respect  the 
more  wholesome  will  it  be.  The  objection  is  to  its 
purely  sceptical  character ;  it  creates  doubt,  it  does 
nothing  more.  It  does  not  make  the  formation  of 
belief  more  intelligible,  the  process  of  knowledge 
more  conceivable,  its  results  more  real,  or  its  conclu- 
sions more  trustworthy.  It  involves  all  these  things 
in  deeper  doubt ;  it  turns  the  relation  of  mind  to 
nature  and  of  nature  to  mind  into  a  hopeless  maze, 
and  creates  suspicion  as  to  the  truth  and  reality  of 
knowledge.  And  this  cannot  be  done  at  one  point 
of  our  intellectual  being  without  affecting  every  other. 
Scepticism  is  a  double-edged  weapon,  and  very  dan- 
gerous in  audacious  hands.  If  faith  in  one  class  of 
beliefs  is  broken  down,  the  result  is  more  likely  to  be 
that  all  classes  will  suffer  than  that  any  one  class  will 
specially  benefit.  Doubt  of  the  veracity  of  mind  in 
its  simplest  operations,  has  a  subtle  way  of  becoming 
doubt  all  round.  Certainly  faith  is  not  made  more 
possible  by  the  processes  and  products  of  mind  being 

24 


370 


CATHOLICISM 


made  less  intelligible  and  real.  The  want  of  a 
constructive  philosophy,  an  architectonic  idea  and 
method,  is  a  fatal  want  in  a  book  which  aims  at  the 
conservation  of  belief.  Descartes'  universal  doubt 
was  not  doubt,  and  was  not  universal ;  it  was  a  pro- 
cess of  digging  down  to  what  the  thinker  believed  to 
be  solid  rock,  in  order  that  he  might  build  upon 
thought  a  system  which  thought  could  clearly  con- 
ceive :  zV.,  the  critical  process  was  necessary  to  the 
architectural  purpose — was,  indeed,  the  first  stage  in 
its  realization.  So,  too,  the  Transcendental  Idealism, 
which  is  here  so  episodically  criticized,  may  handle 
Empiricism  quite  as  caustically  as  our  author ;  but  it 
does  so  that  it  may  discover  the  real  factors  or  posi- 
tive conditions  of  knowledge.  Its  aim  is  to  make  the 
universe  more  intelligible  to  man,  and  man  more  in- 
telligible to  himself ;  to  show  the  subjective  reason 
and  the  objective  rationality  in  such  reciprocal  action 
and  correspondence  as  to  make  the  process  of  know- 
ledge a  solution  of  the  problem  of  being.  The  theory 
may  be  true  or  it  may  be  false,  but,  at  least,  it  is 
positive  :  for  it  so  uses  the  transcendental  factor  in 
knowledge,  viz.,  the  interpreting  reason,  as  to  discover 
and  determine  the  real  ultimate  of  being,  viz.,  the  inter- 
preted reason,  and  to  make  the  thought  which  unites 
these  a  veracious  and  rational  process.  But  Mr. 
Balfour's  method  is  purely  sceptical ;  he  leaves  mind 
bewildered  in  the  face  of  nature,  unable  to  trust  its 
perceptions,  unable  to  determine  what  is  truth,  unable 
to  feel  any  reality  in  knowledge.    By  this  means  he 


"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF 


371 


may  have  made  the  fundamental  ideas  of  science  too 
doubtful  to  be  used  against  faith  ;  but  what  is  the  only 
logical  deduction  possible  from  the  principles  which 
he  has  used  his  sceptical  method  to  obtain  ?  Why, 
this : — Since  error  creeps  into  all  our  thought,  and 
uncertainty  surrounds  all  our  knowledge  of  nature, 
how  can  we  know  that  there  is  any  truth  anywhere,  in 
any  premiss  or  in  any  argument,  any  certainty  in  any 
knowledge,  any  reality  in  any  belief?  If  such  be  the 
result  of  his  sceptical  criticism,  where  is  the  advan- 
tage to  faith  ?  For  what  does  it  represent  in  thought 
save  the  method  of  the  blind  Samson,  who  sacrificed 
himself  in  order  that  he  might  the  more  effectually 
bury  the  Philistines  under  the  ruins  of  their  own 
temple  ? 

§  III.  The  Philosophy  of  Theology 

So  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  what  may 
be  termed  fundamental  philosophical  theory ;  we 
have  now  to  proceed  to  its  application  to  religious 
or  theological  belief. 

1.  And  here  I  may  say,  Mr.  Balfour  seems  to  me 
to  have  no  adequate  sense  of  the  range  and  com- 
plexity of  the  problem  he  has  set  for  himself ;  that 
is  nothing  less  than  to  find  a  positive  philosophy 
of  religious  beliefs.  And  this  he  is  all  the  more 
bound  to  find,  that  his  destructive  criticism  has  been 
so  merciless  and  so  complete.  But  this  problem 
cannot  be  discussed  simply  as  if  it  were  a  matter 
of  individual   experience,  or  a  question   of  con- 


372 


CATHOLICISM 


temporary  thought.  There  is  nothing  at  once  so 
universal  and  so  particular,  so  uniform  and  so  varied, 
as  religion.  Man  everywhere  possesses  and  professes 
it,  yet  it  is  never  in  any  two  countries,  with  any 
two  peoples,  or  even  any  two  persons,  exactly  the 
same  thing.  There  are,  therefore,  two  distinct  yet 
cognate  questions  :  Why  are  religious  beliefs  at  once 
so  invariable  and  so  varied  ?  Why  do  they  every- 
where emerge,  and  yet  everywhere  assume  some 
specific  local  form  ?  It  is  evident  that  the  special 
function  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  is  to  explain 
at  once  why  religious  belief  is  so  universal  and 
uniform,  and  religious  beliefs  so  multiform  and 
varied.  The  causes  that  produce  it  must  be  common 
and  continuous  in  their  action  ;  but  the  conditions 
that  produce  variation,  local  and  occasional.  The 
creative  factor  can  never  cease  to  operate,  otherwise 
the  belief  would  cease  to  live ;  and  were  the  modify- 
ing conditions  to  become  inactive,  all  beliefs  would 
tend  to  a  monotony  of  character  or  sameness  of  form. 
The  one  question  is  wholly  philosophical,  the  other 
is  partly  philosophical  and  partly  historical  ;  and 
taken  together  they  signify  that  the  only  scientific 
and  satisfactory  method  of  enquiry  and  discussion  is 
the  constant  correlation  of  the  permanent  factor  of 
belief  with  its  varying  forms,  in  order  to  the  discovery 
of  the  reason  at  once  of  its  continuous  life  and  con- 
stant change.  Now,  what  one  most  of  all  misses  in 
this  book  is  the  sense  that  there  is  such  a  problem, 
that  it  is  initial  to  all  philosophical  theology,  that 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  373 


till  it  be  discussed  neither  the  bed  nor  the  material 
for  any  foundation  for  belief  has  been  found.  One 
is  surprised  to  find  Mr.  Balfour  distinguishing  as 
he  does  between  "  causes  "  and  "  reasons  "  of  belief ; 
in  the  only  sense  tolerable  in  such  a  discussion, 
"  causes  "  are  "  reasons,"  and  reason  is  cause.  In  a 
scientific  theory  of  the  genesis  of  knowledge  we  find 
its  justification  ;  in  a  philosophical  explanation  of 
the  origin  of  belief  we  have  its  vindication.  The 
very  process  which,  consciously  and  analytically  pur- 
sued by  the  individual,  justifies  his  theism,  produces, 
when  spontaneously  and  synthetically  pursued  by 
the  race,  the  beliefs  which  have  organized  and  built 
up  its  religions. 

But  we  must  take  Mr.  Balfour  on  his  own  terms  ; 
we  have  no  right  to  demand  his  acceptance  of  ours. 
Well,  then,  let  us  grant  that  his  sceptical  criticism 
has  been  completely  victorious  ;  empiricism  is  van- 
quished, and  its  scientific  ideas  so  paralyzed  that 
they  can  no  longer  be  used  as  tests  or  standards  to 
determine  the  credibility  or  incredibility  of  theo- 
logical beliefs.  What  then  ?  The  beliefs  are  there. 
What  are  they  ?  How  did  they  come  to  be  ?  How 
are  they  to  be  justified  ?  He  has  proved  scientific 
ideas  to  be  so  incapable  of  proof  as  to  be  without 
normative  value  or  force  in  the  ethical  and  religious 
realm,  but  he  has  not  proved  theological  beliefs  to 
be  true  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  has  pursued  a  method 
which  compels  us  to  approach  them  in  an  attitude 
of  doubt  or  even  negation.    The  radical  scepticism 


374 


CATHOLICISM 


which  has  created  doubt  of  one  class  of  beliefs,  has 
created  a  presumption  against  the  truth  of  the  other 
class.  But  what  do  we  find  here  ?  A  sudden  re- 
versal of  the  method  before  pursued,  and  no  attempt 
made  to  compel  the  beliefs  to  give  an  account  of 
themselves,  to  justify  their  being,  or  to  examine  their 
form  and  contents  in  the  light  of  their  source.  The 
whilom  sceptic  becomes  curiously  credulous,  while 
he  skilfully  does  not  see  the  questions  which  he  can 
neither  discuss  nor  answer  frankly  and  explicitly  ; 
but  he  offers  an  instructive  substitute  for  a  dis- 
cussion. There  is  a  titular  inquiry  into  the  "  Causes 
of  Experience."  1  What  are  these  "  causes  "  ?  The 
most  diligent  search  through  the  book  has  left  me 
still  with  the  question,  but  without  any  answer. 
This,  of  course,  may  be  purely  my  fault,  but  the  fruits 
of  the  search  are  worth  recording.  "  Naturalism  "  is 
dismissed  ;  what,  then,  is  to  be  our  system  ?  Not 
dualism,  "a  natural  world  immediately  subject  to 
causation,  and  a  spiritual  world  immediately  subject 
to  God."  This  is  "a  patchwork  scheme  of  belief," 
"  a  rough  and  ready  expedient "  for  escaping  from 
"  the  rigid  limits  of  a  too  narrow  system,"  excellent 
in  a  measure,  and  not  to  be  hastily  condemned,  but 
clearly  a  system  in  which  many  find  it  "  difficult  or 
impossible  to  acquiesce."  2  To  those  who  "  ask  for 
a  philosophy  which  shall  give  rational  unity  to  an 
adequate  creed  "  he  answers,  "  I  have  it  not  to  give." 3 


1  Part  III.  chap.  i.        2  pp.  186,  187. 


3  pp.  187,  188. 


!  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  375 


Instead,  "provisionally  restricting  himself  to  the 
scientific  point  of  view,"  he  forbears  "  to  consider 
beliefs  from  the  side  of  proof,"  and  "  surveys  them 
for  a  season  from  the  side  of  origin  only,  and  in 
relation  to  the  causes  which  gave  them  birth." 1 
This  is  excellent ;  the  best  philosophy  of  belief  is 
an  adequate  theory  of  its  origin,  though  we  note 
that  the  forbearance  from  proof  is  here  logical,  or 
rather  inevitable  ;  the  sceptical  criticism  had  made 
any  other  course  simply  impossible,  especially  any 
course  involving  rational  proof.  What,  then,  is  the 
cause  or  origin  of  "the  apparatus  of  belief"  (a  most 
significant  phrase)  "  which  we  find  actually  connected 
with  the  higher  scientific,  social,  and  spiritual  life  of 
the  race  "  ?  2  The  causes  are  many,  "  presuppose  the 
beliefs  of  perception  "  (the  very  perception  which  had 
been  proved  so  habitually  inaccurate  and  menda- 
cious), "  memory,  and  expectation  in  their  elementary 
shape,"  and  "  an  organism  fitted  for  their  hospitable 
reception  by  ages  of  ancestral  preparation."  We 
may  note,  in  passing,  how  empirical  and  scientific  this 
mode  of  speech  is  ;  but  "  these  conditions "  (not 
causes,  it  will  be  seen),  "  are  clearly  not  enough "  ; 
there  must  be  "an  appropriate  environment,"  and 
within  this  is  "a  group  of  causes"  (not  conditions), 
"  so  important  in  their  collective  operation  "  as  to 
demand  "  detailed  notice."  The  name  of  this  group 
is  "  authority,"  and  our  immediate  concern  is  with 
it  as  "  a  non-rational  cause  of  belief." 


1  p.  1 88.        2  p.  193. 


376 


CA  THOLICISM 


2.  Now,  our  first  question  here  is,  What  does  Mr. 
Balfour  mean  by  "  Authority  "  ?  It  is  a  large  word, 
denotes  varied  things,  connotes  many  ideas.  It  has 
one  sense  in  literature,  another  in  science,  another 
in  law,  still  another  in  religion  ;  in  the  realm  of 
opinion  it  denotes  the  right  to  define  and  the  power 
to  enforce  belief ;  in  the  sphere  of  action,  the  right 
to  prescribe  conduct  and  to  exact  obedience.  It  has 
been  conceived  as  both  personal  and  impersonal, 
vested  in  the  one  case  in  a  society  like  the  church, 
or  in  a  body  of  beliefs  like  tradition,  or  a  written 
word  like  the  Sacred  Scriptures ;  or,  in  the  other 
case,  in  either  an  invisible  Head  like  our  Lord,  or 
in  a  visible  head  like  the  Pope.  Now,  in  what  sense 
does  Mr.  Balfour  use  the  term  ?  He  says  it  is  "  a 
word  which  transports  us  into  a  stormy  tract  of 
speculation  nearly  adjacent  to  theology  " ; 1  it  may 
be  too  much  to  say  it  "  has  been  for  three  centuries 
the  main  battlefield  of  new  thoughts  and  old,"  but 
we  can  contrast  it  with  reason,  its  "  rival  and  oppo- 
nent." 2  "  We  are  acted  upon  by  authority,"  but 
when  "  we  reason  "  we  act,  we  produce.3  When  it  is 
so  described  we  seem  to  be  dealing  with  authority 
in  its  special  religious  sense,  as  legislative  over 
opinion,  and  judicial  as  regards  conduct  ;  but  this 
soon  turns  out  to  be  a  mistake.  For  under  one 
aspect  it  is  the  Zeitgeist,  the  spirit  of  the  age  ;  then 
it   appears   as   a   "  psychological    atmosphere,"  or 


1  P-  J94-       2  PP-  193,  2l9-      3  P-  2°3- 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF" 


377 


"  climate,"  favourable  to  some,  unfavourable  to  other 
beliefs  ;  1  then  it  assumes  the  shape  of  "  custom, 
education,  public  opinion,  family,  party,  or  Church  "  ; 2 
in  a,  for  Mr.  Balfour,  curious  antithesis,  "the  equities 
of  reason  "  are  opposed  to  "  the  expediencies  of  au- 
thority "  ; 3  and  finally,  it  is  said  to  "  stand  for  that 
group  of  non-rational  causes,  moral,  social,  and  educa- 
tional, which  produces  its  results  by  psychic  processes 
other  than  reasoning,"1  and  in  this  sense  it  is  con- 
trasted with  "  Papal  infallibility." 5  What,  then, 
does  he  mean  by  "  authority  "  ?  Why,  exactly  what 
Hume  meant  by  "  custom  "  ;  what  Mr.  Spencer  might 
describe  as  the  accumulated  and  transmitted  experi- 
ence of  the  race,  of  the  State,  or  of  the  family.  It 
is  an  explanation  of  belief  by  means  of  a  "  non- 
rational  cause";6  in  Hume's  phrase,  it  is  "belief 
engendered  upon  custom,"  which  custom  he  would, 
in  turn,  have  termed  the  creation  of  "  a  certain  kind 
of  accident" — i.e.,  a  result  which  was  "  non-rational," 
or  for  which  he  could  give  no  reason.  We  may 
understand  why  Hume  should  tell  us  that  the 
"  ultimate  cause  of  the  impression  is  perfectly  inex- 
plicable by  human  reason,"  that  reason  itself  is  only 

1  p.  206.     2  p.  213.     3  p.  215.     4  p.  219.     5  pp.  223  ff. 

8  In  Philosophic  Doubt  Mr.  Balfour  seemed  prepared  to  apply 
his  theory  to  theological  as  well  as  to  other  beliefs  :  "  The 
progress  of  knowledge  has  led  us  rather  to  diminish  our  esti- 
mate of  the  part  which  reasons  as  opposed  to  other  causes  have 
played  in  the  formation  of  creeds  ;  for  it  has  shown  that  these 
reasons  are  themselves  the  results  of  non-rational  antecedents," 
pp.  200,  201. 


3/3 


CA  TH0L1CISM 


"  an  unintelligible  instinct,"  that  "  belief  is  an  act  of 
the  mind  arising  from  custom,"  which  is  "  the  founda- 
tion of  all  our  judgments  " — for  that  was  scepticism 
logically  applied  to  all  classes  of  beliefs.  But  what 
we  do  not  understand  is  how  custom,  though  trans- 
muted into  "  authority,"  should  be  able  to  save  one 
class  of  beliefs,  while  criticism  is  free  to  inflict  upon 
another  the  sentence  of  intellectual  death.  What 
seems  plain  is  that  Mr.  Balfour  has,  by  emptying 
the  reason,  or  normal  nature  of  man,  of  all  construc- 
tive ideas,  emptied  it  also  of  all  the  higher  beliefs, 
and  so  has  to  invent  a  special  agency  or  method  for 
their  introduction.  In  other  words,  the  sceptical 
criticism  has  evoked  its  inevitable  Nemesis — i.e.,  has 
divorced  thought  as  completely  from  God  as  percep- 
tion from  the  realities  of  nature  ;  and  so  has  made, 
in  Mr.  Balfour's  own  words,  "  certitude  the  child  of 
custom,"1  only  custom  has  undergone  baptism  and 
appears  as  "  authority,"  the  demure  mother  of  Chris- 
tian beliefs. 

3.  Now,  on  this  very  curious  theory,  which  is  also 
most  instructive,  especially  so  far  as  it  illustrates 
Mr.  Balfour's  own  mind  and  attitude  to  theology,  I 
have  some  criticisms  to  offer. 

i.  What  is  the  "  reason  "  to  which  "  authority  "  is 
here  opposed  ?  It  seems  to  be  not  so  much 
"  reason,"  as  ratiocination.  The  use  and  interchange 
of  terms  in  this  chapter  is  indeed  a  perplexing,  but 


1  p.  164. 


"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF" 


379 


highly  educative  study.  We  have  "reason,"  "we 
reason  "  ;  "  reasoning,"  gliding  out  and  in  of  sentences 
and  taking  each  other's  places  as  if  they  were  strict 
synonyms.  Now  ratiocination  may  denote  an  activity 
or  exercise  or  process  of  the  reason,  but  it  is  not 
reason ;  and  is  in  no  sense  the  antithesis  of  authority, 
under  which,  as  scholasticism  shows,  it  may  live  and 
operate  with  quite  preternatural  acuteness  and  suc- 
cess. If  these  opposed  terms  had  been  carefully 
discriminated  and  defined,  we  should  have  been 
spared  this  chapter. 

ii.  It  is  curious  that  the  author,  in  dealing  with  a 
matter  so  fundamental  to  his  argument,  should  never 
raise  the  question,  how  this  authority,  or  custom,  or 
group  of  causes  "  of  psychic  processes,"  acting  within 
our  psychological  environment,  came  to  be.  To 
what  kind  or  class  of  factors  or  agencies  does  it  owe 
its  existence?  He  describes  it  as  "a  non-rational 
cause  of  belief"  :  but  what  is  it  itself — a  creation  of 
reason,  a  result  of  purpose,  or  a  non-rational  effect  of 
a  non-rational  cause?  If  reason  made  it,  how  can  it 
be  truly  described  as  "a  non-rational  cause  of  belief"  ? 
If  reason  did  not  make  it,  what  did  ?  Accident  or 
chance?  But  these  terms  denote  the  worst  sort  of 
Agnosticism  ;  they  are  the  kind  of  words  which  a 
moment  of  puzzled  incompetence  surprised  out  of 
sceptic  Hume,  and  so  they  are  alien  to  the  mind 
which  comes  to  lead  us  into  the  inner  court  of  theo- 
logy. The  question  as  to  the  source  or  cause  of  the 
authority  is  determinative  of  its  nature  and  character. 


3So 


CA  TII0LIC1SM 


One  would  think  that  if  it  be  a  "  rational  effect,"  it 
could  not  be  a  "non-rational  cause"  of  a  thing  so 
rational  as  ethical  and  religious  belief.  And  the 
greater  the  function  authority  has  in  history  and  in 
the  formation  of  mind,  the  less  can  we  conceive  it 
as  a  non-rational  factor  of  rational  things  ;  otherwise 
the  forces  which  govern  man  will  cease  to  be  either 
theistic  or  ethical.  And  the  puzzlement  is  increased 
by  some  of  Mr.  Balfour's  own  phrases.  His 
"authority"  assumes  various  most  rational  forms; 
"  the  spirit  of  the  age,"  which  is  just  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  created  by  its  living  thought ;  parental 
discipline,  which  is  surely  the  action  of  rational  will 
upon  rational  will  ;  education,  which  is  the  more 
mature  acting  by  means  of  rational  instruments  on 
the  less  mature  mind  ;  custom,  which  is  a  mode  of 
intelligent  action  become  habitual  and  common.1 
What  acts  under  these  forms  and  conditions  is  surely 
incorrectly  described  as  "  a  non-rational  cause  of 
belief."  The  phrase  seems,  therefore,  to  me  either 
insignificant  or  absurd.  If  what  is  here  termed 
authority,  viz.,  our  organized  ethical  ideals,  intellec- 
tual habits,  and  social  instincts  in  their  organizing 
action,  have  a  rational  cause — and  unless  this  be 
granted  we  depose  Providence  for  accident — then  it 
must  be  rational  when  it  becomes  a  cause  of  beliefs. 
And,  whatever  their  cause,  what  are  beliefs?  Non- 

1  Mr.  Balfour  in  one  place  explains  "authority"  by  "the 
non-rational  action  of  mind  on  mind"  (p.  238).  Sentences  of 
this  order  cause  one's  ideas  to  get  a  little  mixed. 


"  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  38 1 

rational  effects?  If  so,  what  are  the  things  whose 
being  Mr.  Balfour  would  justify,  but  blind  creations 
of  a  blind  cause,  which  man  must  with  his  growth  in 
reason  get  progressively  rid  of? 

iii.  It  is  also  curious  that  Mr.  Balfour  did  not  raise 
the  question  as  to  the  relation  of  the  individual  to 
these  beliefs  of  non-rational  origin.  Man  is  ever 
modifying  his  environment  by  his  action  on  it ;  which 
means  that  this  so-called  authority  is  ever  in  process 
of  change,  being,  as  it  were,  ever  called  to  account 
and  compelled  to  adapt  itself  to  the  new  mind  and 
its  new  forms  of  belief  or  modes  of  thought ;  and  this 
further  means  that  the  person  whom  the  authority 
forms,  in  turn  reforms  the  authority.  For  the  life  of 
the  belief  is  quite  as  significant  as  its  origin.  If  its 
origin  is  non-rational,  it  lives  its  life  in  a  rational 
medium,  and  has  to  accept  the  conditions  under 
which  life  there  is  possible.  And  surely  it  is  more 
philosophical  to  bring  the  causes  of  the  origin  and 
the  conditions  of  the  maintenance  of  life  into  har- 
mony, than  to  set  them  at  war  with  each  other.  We 
must  also  remember  that  the  life  of  the  belief  within 
the  reason  ever  acts  as  a  modifying  force  on  the 
environment.  Mr.  Balfour  knows  the  distinction 
which  the  Roman  jurists  drew  between  jus  naturale 
and  jus  civile,  and  the  use  they  made  of  the  former 
to  affect  the  latter.  The  jus  civile  was  statutory, 
established  and  fixed  law — so  to  speak,  the  actual 
legal  environment ;  the  jus  naturale  was  ideal,  the 
principle  of  justice  and  equity  immanent  in  the  man, 


382 


CATHOLICISM 


yet,  with  the  progress  of  his  ethical  culture,  growing 
ever  more  articulate.  And  the  great  jurists  of  the 
second  and  third  centuries,  who  were  also  for  the 
most  part  Stoics,  so  applied  the  ideal  of  law  within, 
to  the  actual  law  without,  as  to  compel  the  actual  to 
embody  the  ideal,  at  least  in  as  perfect  a  degree  as 
we  are  ever  likely  to  see  in  time.  And  precisely  the 
same  action  is  ever  going  on  in  the  region  of  belief. 
Whatever  may  be  its  origin,  thought  is  a  potent 
factor  in  its  modification  ;  and  on  its  harmony  with 
thought  its  continued  life  depends.  A  "  non-rational 
cause"  is  no  explanation  of  the  being  of  a  rational 
thing ;  and  we  may  be  certain  that  in  the  last 
analysis  the  real  source  can  never  be  different  in 
kind  from  the  cause  which  secures  continuance. 

iv.  The  most  curious  point  of  all  is  this  :  Mr. 
Balfour  never  raises  the  question  as  to  whether  the 
authority  which  causes  the  belief  justifies  the  belief  it 
causes.  This  surely  was  for  his  purpose  the  most 
vital  point  in  his  problem  ;  apart  from  it,  his  cause 
was  without  character  or  logical  function.  The  real 
question  he  set  himself  to  answer  was  this :  What 
are  we  to  think  of  Christian  theology  and  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  it  is  built?  It  is  not  any  or  every 
religious  belief  that  he  seeks  to  justify  ;  it  is  our 
specifically  Christian  beliefs.  He  has  made  his 
appeal  to  authority,  which  is  "  the  spirit  of  the  age," 
our  "  psychological  climate,"  public  opinion,  custom, 
family,  party,  Church  ;  but  these  are  all  the  most 
variable  of  things.    Our  "  psychological  climates  "  are 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"1  383 


more  numerous,  varied,  and  changeable  than  our 
geographical  ;  the  extremes  are  greater,  the  grada- 
tions steeper,  and  the  variations  more  sudden.  Mr. 
Balfour  is  a  statesman  as  well  as  a  philosopher,  and 
he  will  not  think  me  impertinent  if  the  point  be 
illustrated  by  his  own  position  and  experience.  He 
is  by  descent  and  family  a  Scotchman,  but  by  educa- 
tion and  political  place  an  Englishman  ;  the  "  psycho- 
logical climate "  in  Scotland  is  Presbyterian  ;  in 
England,  Episcopalian :  does  his  double  nationality 
duplicate  his  beliefs?  Does  it  justify  his  being  a 
Calvinist  and  Presbyterian  north  of  the  Tweed,  an 
Arminian  and  an  Anglican  south  of  it  ?  Are  the 
proper  beliefs  of  a  man  those  of  his  "  psychological 
climate?"  or  is  this  "climate"  a  justification  for  the 
beliefs  ?  or  has  it  no  significance  for  their  character  ? 
But  this  is  an  innocent  comparison,  involving  what 
may  be  thought  no  very  radical  difference.  Well, 
then,  Mr.  Balfour,  as  a  statesman,  has  helped  to 
govern  India  ;  and  he  may  one  day  be  at  home  the 
responsible  minister  for  it,  or  even  go  out  there  to  be 
the  representative  of  his  Sovereign.  Its  "  psycho- 
logical climate,"  customs,  education,  public  opinion — 
in  a  word,  "  authority  " — is  very  unlike  ours  :  what  of 
the  beliefs  it  causes?  What  is  their  truth,  their 
validity,  their  value  and  warrant  ?  The  question  is 
not  simply  curious;  it  is  vital.  If  authority  is  in- 
voked to  explain  belief,  how  do  the  beliefs  it  explains 
stand  related  to  theology  and  theological  truth  ?  Is 
religion  to  become  a  theory  of  "  climate  ? "    And  is 


3§4 


all  idea  of  a  religion  true  for  all  places,  all  times,  and 
all  men,  to  be  allowed  to  fall  to  the  ground  ?  This 
would  be  indeed  a  strange  result  to  follow  from  a 
philosophically  conservative  attempt  to  lay  "  the 
foundations  of  belief."  Yet  it  recalls  the  attempt 
of  another  conservative  and  sceptical  philosopher  to 
make  the  "  psychological "  coincide  with  the  civil  or 
national,  if  not  with  the  geographical,  climate  ;  it 
exactly  repeats  the  theory  of  Hobbes,  with  im- 
personal authority  substituted  for  the  personal  king. 
We  were  not  surprised  at  it  in  his  case,  for  he  had  a 
frankness  which  was  so  blunt  as  to  leave  no  room  for 
surprise ;  but  we  do  wonder  at  finding  it  in  so  acute 
a  critic  of  "  Naturalism,"  and  so  strenuous  an  upholder 
of  theology,  as  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour. 

§  IV.    The  Theology  of  the  Philosopher 

But  it  is  more  than  time  we  passed  to  the  con- 
structive part  of  the  work,  if  constructive  it  can  be 
called.  Here  it  is  more  difficult  to  criticize,  for  the 
points  of  agreement  and  difference  are  in  these  later 
chapters  so  intricately  intermixed.  His  argument 
has  about  it  the  waywardness  of  genius  ;  it  halts  in 
unexpected  places,  turns  back  upon  itself,  breaks  into 
felicitous  asides,  diverges  into  delightsome  by-paths. 
The  book  indeed  is  redeemed  by  its  digressions ; 
without  them  it  would  have  seemed  a  mere  exercise 
in  cunning  sword-play,  but  with  them  it  has  all  the 
appearance  of  an  army  of  victorious  arguments 
marching  into  the  battle.     Were  battles  won  by 


"■THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF''  385 


gallant  bearing,  gay  banners,  and  martial  music,  our 
author  would  deserve  to  be  saluted  as  a  victor  indeed. 

What,  then,  is  the  method  and  principle  of  the 
constructive  argument  ?  It  starts  with  the  pro- 
visional scheme  for  the  unification  of  beliefs ;  and 
here  the  definition  of  faith  is  significant.  "  Faith  or 
assurance,  which,  if  not  in  excess  of  reason,  is  at  least 
independent  of  it,  seems  to  be  a  necessity  in  every 
great  department  of  knowledge  which  touches  on 
action."  1  In  this  sense  it  belongs  in  an  equal  degree, 
at  once  to  science  and  theology,  to  ethics  and 
religion  ;  and  while  the  belief  in  an  outer  world  is 
more  universal  and  inevitable  than  any  single 
religious  belief,  yet  "  these  peculiarities  have  no 
import.  They  exist,  but  they  are  irrelevant."  For 
man  is  a  being  of  needs  as  well  as  of  sense-percep- 
tions ;  and  his  needs  require  ethical  ideals  and  religious 
beliefs  for  their  satisfaction.  And  just  as  in  every 
belief  which  has  its  origin  in  perception,  we  assume 
some  kind  of  harmony  between  ourselves  and  the 
outer  universe ;  so  a  like  harmony  ought  to  be 
assumed  between  "that  universe  and  our  higher 
needs."  2  What  strikes  one  in  this  rather  rudimen- 
tary equation  of  beliefs,  is  its  unreasoned  character, 
indeed  the  utterly  illogical  and  unphilosophical  pro- 
cedure by  which  it  has  been  accomplished.  Nothing 
could  be  more  different  than  the  measure  which  is 
meted  out  to  the  two  orders  of  beliefs  respectively. 
The  one  class  has  been  analyzed,  criticized,  satirized, 


1  p.  240.        a  p.  247. 


25 


386 


CA  THOLICISM 


beaten  and  buffeted  in  every  possible  way ;  the  other 
class  is  allowed  to  enter  without  any  kind  of  question, 
or  any  attempt  to  examine  either  its  subjective 
warrant  or  objective  validity.  But  this  difference  is 
a  serious  confession,  either  of  the  incompetence  of  the 
philosophy  to  justify  the  beliefs,  or  of  the  incapability 
of  the  beliefs  to  be  justified.  It  is  an  acknowledg- 
ment that  they  cannot  bear  to  be  reasoned  about,  but 
live  in  a  region  of  emotion  or  instinct,  of  feeling  and 
impulse.  This  is  of  all  positions  the  most  intellec- 
tually dangerous,  especially  when  the  basis  for  it  has 
been  laid  in  philosophical  scepticism.  For  feeling  is 
an  individual  thing,  living  an  unstable  and  dependent 
life,  noble  only  as  it  is  penetrated  by  the  intellect  and 
governed  by  the  conscience.  A  distinguished  German 
thinker,  whose  philosophy  was  even  as  Mr.  Balfour's, 
described  himself  as  a  heathen  according  to  the 
intellect,  but  a  Christian  according  to  the  heart. 
And  where  such  a  schism  has  been  introduced  into 
the  nature,  the  old  heathen  is  certain  to  prove  himself 
subtler  and  stronger  than  the  young  Christian. 

Mr.  Balfour,  indeed,  maintains  that  the  relation 
between  our  "  needs  "  and  their  satisfaction  is  not  as 
"  purely  subjective  in  character  "  as  that  between  "  a 
desire  and  its  fulfilment."  The  correspondence  is 
that  between  "  the  immutable  verities  of  the  unseen 
world,"  and  "  these  characteristics  of  our  nature,  which 
we  recognize  as  that  in  us  which,  though  not  neces- 
sarily the  strongest,  is  the  highest." 1    But  what  are 


1  p.  24S. 


"THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  BELIEF"  387 


these  "  characteristics  "  ?  What  faculty  in  us  corre- 
sponds to  verity  In  the  universe?  Is  it  not  reason  or 
thought,  the  faculty  by  which  we  know  rather  than 
feel  ?  He  had  everything  to  gain  by  as  free  a  use  of 
the  critical  method  on  the  source,  the  form,  and  the 
matter  of  religious  beliefs,  as  on  the  basis  and  truth 
of  scientific  ideas ;  by  his  failure  to  use  it  he  leaves 
to  the  beliefs  an  unjustified  existence,  introduces  a 
hopeless  schism  between  knowledge  and  faith,  and 
tends  to  reduce  religion  to  a  mere  consuetudinary 
and  institutional  system.  Indeed,  the  notion  that 
religion — though  not  religious  ideas — is  the  creature 
of  custom,  the  thing  of  "  psychological  atmosphere  " 
or  political  "climate,"  is  the  historical  correlative  of 
his  fundamental  philosophy  ;  and,  though  incompletely 
developed,  it  lurks  in  all  the  constructive  parts  of  the 
book,  notably  in  his  theories  of  "  authority "  and  of 
"  beliefs  and  formulas." 

But  I  would  not  part  from  the  book  and  its  author 
without  expressing  anew  my  admiration  of  its  spirit, 
and  of  his  purpose  and  endeavour.  It  is  a  remark- 
able achievement  for  a  statesman  ;  and  gives  to  the 
State  the  happy  assurance  that  a  mind  which  may 
yet  control  its  destinies,  has  visions  of  higher  and 
more  enduring  things  than  the  strife  of  parties,  the 
collision  of  interests,  or  the  jealousies  of  classes.  We 
live  by  faith  ;  and  this  faith  is  here  often  fitly  and 
finely  expressed.  To  his  belief  in  a  God  capable  of 
"preferential  action";  in  an  inspiration  "limited  to  no 
age,  to  no  country,  to  no  people  " ;  in  an  incarnation 


388 


CA  THOLICISM 


which  may  transcend  science,  but  is  "  the  abiding 
place  of  the  highest  reality " ;  in  Christianity,  as  a 
religion  so  "effectually  fitted  to  minister  to  our 
ethical  needs "  as  to  be  made  even  more  credible 
by  the  mystery  of  evil,  which  it  so  forcibly  recognizes 
that  it  may  the  more  victoriously  overcome — I  en- 
tirely and  heartily  subscribe.  My  criticism  has 
concerned  not  so  much  the  end  he  has  reached,  as 
his  mode  of  reaching  it.  The  way  of  faith  is  in 
these  days  hard  enough ;  it  need  not  be  made  more 
difficult ;  and  it  becomes  those  who  believe  that  the 
highest  truth  of  reason  is  one  with  the  highest  object 
of  faith,  to  make  it  clear  that,  in  their  view  at  least,  a 
true  theology  can  never  be  built  on  a  sceptical  philo- 
sophy, and  that  only  the  thought  which  trusts  the 
reason  can  truly  vindicate  faith  in  the  God  who 
gave  it. 

April,  1895. 


IX 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS 
n™^HE  heaviest  loss  which  theology  has  sustained 


J-  within  the  past  decade  seems  to  me,  even 
after  the  lapse  of  more  than  seven  softening  years,  to 
have  been  the  sudden  and  premature  death  of  Edwin 
Hatch.  Within  his  own  communion  more  eminent 
churchmen,  and  scholars  of  equal  or  even  higher  name, 
have  died  ;  but  each,  in  a  sense  that  was  not  at  all 
true  of  Hatch,  either  had  finished  his  work  or  was 
more  a  loss  to  his  church  than  to  theology.  Light- 
foot,  a  son  of  the  same  school,  though  of  another 
university,  only  a  month  later  followed  him  to  the 
grave  ;  and  he  had  by  his  learned  labours  built 
himself  an  enduring  monument,  worthy,  alike  as 
regards  magnitude  and  quality,  of  the  most  heroic 
age  of  English  scholarship.  In  the  following  year 
two  distinguished  churchmen  died  :  Canon  Liddon, 
whose  fine  piety  and  noble  eloquence  made  him 
while  he  lived  a  potent  influence  both  within  and 
beyond  the  Anglican  communion  ;  and  Dean  Church, 
who  preferred  to  remain  a  dean  when  he  might  have 
been  an  archbishop,  and  who  was  perhaps  more  a 


390 


CATHOLICISM 


man  of  letters  than  a  theologian,  with  the  keen 
literary  temper,  and  a  tense  nature  which  the  love 
of  the  old  humanities  rather  cultivated  than  subdued. 
Two  years  later  Hort  died,  leaving  behind  work 
much  less  in  quantity  than  Lightfoot's,  but  marked 
by  rarer  and  more  stimulating  qualities,  and  a  band 
of  eager  disciples,  quickened  to  activity  by  regret  at 
the  stores  of  knowledge  and  the  energy  of  construc- 
tive thought  which  had  perished  with  the  master. 
In  1893,  about  a  year  after  Hort,  death  claimed 
another  victim,  Benjamin  Jowett,  though  he  indeed 
"  came  to  the  grave  in  a  full  age,  like  as  a  shock  of 
corn  cometh  in  his  season."  He  had  made  his  name 
in  theology,  but  had  for  years  forsaken  what  he  had 
found  to  be  its  unquiet  ways  for  the  serener  atmo- 
sphere of  classical  scholarship  and  philosophy,  and 
had  in  consequence  become,  though  in  a  narrower 
region,  an  intenser  and  less  resistible  power,  because 
a  power  more  intangible.  He  was  the  most  distin- 
guished figure  in  the  Oxford  of  his  day,  the  one  name 
that  created  a  new  mythology  and  attracted  to  itself 
the  most  picturesque  elements  in  the  old,  affecting 
belief  the  more  potently  that  his  public  silence  and 
his  sphinx-like  utterances  in  private  compelled,  in 
order  to  the  interpretation  of  his  mind,  a  free  use 
of  the  young  academic  imagination.  There  was 
indeed  a  peculiar  pathos  about  his  closing  days ; 
though  he  was  a  most  social  man,  loving  society  and 
loved  by  it,  yet  he  was  one  of  the  loneliest  of  men. 
He  was  the  last  Broad  Churchman  of  the  old  school, 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  391 


i.e.,  he  was  a  Christian  whose  Church  was  the  State, 
whose  beliefs  were  more  akin  to  humanism  than  to 
dogma  and  the  creeds,  oecumenical  or  particular, 
whose  love  was  for  civil  society  and  sanctity  ;  while 
he  feared  priestly  claims  and  despised  the  show  and 
the  make-believe  of  sacerdotal  religion.  He  was  one 
of  the  rare  characters  who  could  be  cynical  without 
being  bitter,  who  could  be  audacious  in  speech  while 
he  seemed  most  innocent  and  bland  ;  and,  though  he 
looked  with  a  wonder,  not  untouched  with  pain,  at 
the  ancient  comrades  who  had  risen  in  the  church  by 
falling  in  the  faith,  he  was  yet  able  to  retain  affection 
even  where  he  had  ceased  to  feel  intellectual  respect. 
When  he  died,  Oxford  and  England  were  the  poorer 
for  the  loss  of  one  who  had  served  the  church  by 
being  true  to  himself. 

The  two  men  we  have  described  as  "  distinguished 
churchmen "  lie  outside  the  scope  of  this  paper. 
Neither  was,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  a  theo- 
logian. Canon  Liddon  was  a  man  of  strong  religious 
convictions  and  eloquent  speech ;  he  believed  in- 
tensely, thought  earnestly,  and  reasoned  concerning 
his  beliefs  with  a  sort  of  impassioned  logic  that  was 
very  impressive  when  it  had  a  large  and  strenuously 
sincere  personality  behind  it.  But  neither  as  thinker 
nor  as  critic  and  scholar  did  he  make  to  the  theology 
of  his  age  any  contribution  that  will  outlast  his 
personal  influence.  And  even  before  he  died,  his 
influence  had,  just  because  of  his  intellectual  limita- 
tions, suffered,  even  within  his  own  party  in  his  own 


392 


CA  THOLICISM 


church,  what  may  be  alternatively  described  as  re- 
striction or  eclipse.  He  had  built  on  tradition,  and 
when  tradition  manifestly  failed  as  a  basis  of  doctrine 
and  was  forsaken  by  the  more  clear-sighted  of  his 
pupils,  he  felt  as  if  the  whole  structure  of  faith  had 
broken  up  beneath  him.  What  we  may  term  his 
farewell  to  the  pulpit  was  fitly  spoken  in  St.  Mary's, 
Oxford,  and  was  little  else  than  a  forlorn  apology  for 
an  impossible  position.  Dean  Church,  again,  had 
a  keen  and  sympathetic  intellect,  a  quick  and  assimi- 
lative mind,  which  came  of  his  literary  instincts  and 
made  him  the  very  converse  of  Liddon  ;  one  capable 
of  appreciating  new  points  of  view,  adopting  and 
adapting  them  to  older  forms  of  thought,  and  of 
securing  for  them,  by  vigour  and  grace  of  exposition, 
acceptance  and  recognition.  He  was  by  nature  and 
capacity  a  Vermittler,  and  he  did  his  work  with  most 
excellent  discrimination.  He  understood  Darwin 
and  appreciated  evolution  ;  he  had  a  critical  intellect, 
knew  that  criticism  was  inevitable,  and  saw  how  its 
sting  could  be  drawn  by  some  of  its  results  being 
appropriated.  And  he  wrote  with  the  strength  and 
moderation  of  one  who  stood  fast  in  the  conviction, 
that  the  old  could  best  be  preserved  by  taking  to 
itself  as  much  of  the  new  as  it  could  absorb  without 
danger  to  its  distinctive  character  and  claims.  But 
most  of  his  work  was  provisional  and  occasional,  and 
had  a  sort  of  periodical  character  about  it ;  as  it  was 
done  to  meet  an  emergency,  its  significance  passed 
away  with  the  emergency  it  satisfied.    His  essay  on 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  393 


Dante  is  perhaps  the  most  perfect  thing  he  ever  did  ; 
while  his  book  on  Anselm  shows  how  he  could  write 
on  a  great  theologian  and  find  his  theology — which, 
after  all,  was  his  great  claim  to  name  and  fame — the 
least  attractive  or  significant  thing  about  him.  What 
he  achieved  instead  was  a  most  genial  appreciation  of 
one  churchman  by  another. 

§  I.  The  Cambridge  Scholars  and  Divines 

We  turn  then  to  the  four  scholars  who  were 
theologians  as  distinguished  from  churchmen  :  and 
of  them,  two  were  typical  of  Cambridge,  and  two 
no  less  typical  of  Oxford.  This  is  not  a  study  in 
academic  types  ;  but  the  difference  in  these  univer- 
sities is  a  basis  for  a  classification  which  is  not 
altogether  unjust  to  character.  It  will  be  most 
convenient  to  begin  with  the  Cambridge  men.  But 
we  can  hardly  think  of  the  two  who  have  died, 
without  thinking  of  a  third,  who,  happily,  still  lives, 
though  in  a  sphere  which,  unhappily,  forbids  the 
expectation  of  much  further  theological  work  from 
his  hand. 

i.  Lightfoot,  Westcott,  and  Hort  represent  the 
nearest  thing  to  a  triumvirate  in  learning  any  Eng- 
lish university  has  known,  at  least  in  our  century  ; 
possibly  too,  the  nearest  approach  to  a  distinct 
tendency  or  school,  since  the  days  of  the  Cambridge 
Platonists,  Whichcote,  Cudworth,  and  More.  Each 
in  his  own  way  was  a  genuine  son  of  his  university, 
enhancing  its  reputation  by  embodying  its  historical 


394 


CATHOLICISM 


character  and  distinctive  genius.  Lightfoot  was  a 
scholar  whose  learning  recalled  that  of  his  illustrious 
namesake  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  while  his 
energy  in  controversy  and  mastery  of  his  weapons 
reminded  one  now  of  Whitgift  and  now  of  Bentley. 
He  was,  indeed,  altogether  too  massive  and  sincere 
to  stoop  to  the  arts  and  language  of  Elizabeth's 
famous  archbishop,  though,  in  explanation,  it  ought 
to  be  remembered  that  in  these  respects  the  distance 
between  the  sixteenth  and  the  nineteenth  century 
is  simply  immeasurable ;  and  his  manhood  was  too 
large  and  sane  and  kindly  to  allow  him  to  flay  an 
opponent  in  the  merciless  manner  of  Phileleuthcnis 
Lipsiensis.  He  had,  as  his  criticism  of  Supernatural 
Religion  showed,  all  Bentley 's  power  to  hit  an  oppo- 
nent hard  and  straight,  though,  happily,  without  his 
marvellous  ingenuity  in  quarrelling  with  his  friends 
and  provoking  quarrels  where  he  need  have  none.  He 
had,  too,  if  not  all  his  fine  scholarship,  yet  his  rare 
critical  genius,  and,  again  happily,  without  the 
eccentricity  of  mind  that  made  the  greatest  English 
scholar  of  his  century  the  worst  judge  of  English 
literature. 

Dr.  Westcott  we  here  think  of  as  the  Cambridge 
professor  with  a  very  distinct  message  to  his  age,  and 
not  as  the  Bishop  of  Durham.  We  now  know  that 
he  combines  in  a  rare  degree  the  natures  of  the 
speculative  and  the  practical  man,  the  dreamer  and 
the  realist,  the  intellect  that  can  see  visions  and  the 
will  that  can  realize  the  visions  he  has  seen.  But, 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  395 


meanwhile,  we  forget  the  administrator  and  think 
only  of  the  scholar,  who  seemed  almost  like  a 
Cambridge  Neo-Platonist  strayed  out  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  into  our  own ;  yet  with  most  charac- 
teristic differences.  These  we  may  indicate  rather 
than  define  thus  :  He  was  a  Neo-Platonist  of  the 
ecclesiastical  rather  than  of  the  classical  Renaissance. 
He  did  not  so  much  seek  to  find  the  Church  in 
philosophy  as  philosophy  in  the  Church  ;  he  came 
to  his  Platonism  through  Clement  and  Origen,  not 
through  Plotinus  and  Numenius  ;  and  so  it  tended 
to  be  sacramental  more  than  symbolical,  to  be 
allegorical  in  thought  and  expression,  in  art  and 
history  ;  which  means  that  he  was  in  intellect  less 
rational  than  emotional  and  intuitive.  His  system, 
which  is  only  another  name  for  the  attitude  of  his 
mind,  was  more  Biblical  than  classical,  deduced  from 
John  and  the  Hebrews,  not  from  Plato  and  the 
Academy.  But  though  the  form  was  changed,  yet 
it  held  the  old  spirit.  The  idealism  was  not  the 
less  real  that  it  found  its  material  in  the  Gospels 
and  Epistles,  instead  of  in  philosophical  treatises  ; 
and  that  it  was  developed  in  commentaries  on  the 
books  of  the  New  Testament,  and  not  on  all  the 
mythologies. 

Hort,  again,  was  more  the  pure  scholar  and  critic 
than  either  of  the  other  two.  And  so  he  was  too 
conscious  of  the  possibilities  of  error  and  the  limita- 
tions of  knowledge,  to  reach  the  clear-cut  and  assured 
conclusions  of  Lightfoot ;  too  much  alive  to  the 


CA  THOLICISM 


complexities  of  thought  and  the  inadequacies  of 
human  speech,  to  be  as  prolific  and  facile  a  writer 
as  Westcott.  We  know  Hort,  indeed,  only  from  his 
works,  and  especially  from  his  Life  and  Letters ; 
but  in  this  we  are  far  from  singular  ;  for  it  may  be 
said  of  the  men  who  knew  him  in  the  flesh  and  were 
thought  to  be  his  friends,  that  only  one,  his  twin 
soul,  or  it  may  be  two,  knew  him  in  any  other  way. 
Before  fame  had  idealized  him,  and  turned  his  very 
peculiarities  into  notes  of  distinction,  he  was  to 
swift  and  obvious  academic  wit,  but  Hortus  siccus. 
He  has  been  described  by  the  most  competent  of 
living  hands,  and  a  hand  made  competent  no  less 
by  love  and  reverence  for  his  memory  than  by 
knowledge  of  his  work,  as  "our  greatest  English 
theologian  of  the  century,"  yet  as  "a  man  of  humble 
mind "  and  "  inexorable  sincerity."  1  If  unable  to 
accept  without  qualification  all  that  is  implied  in 
the  first  statement,  yet,  as  one  who  knew  him  only 
from  afar,  I  may  be  allowed  brief  space  for  a  few 
sentences  of  appreciation  and  regret.  For  his  charac- 
ter and  history  appeal  in  a  signal  degree  to  a  man 
whose  main  interests  lie  in  theology.  Academic 
distinction  came  earlier  to  the  other  two  than  to 
him ;  and  they  had  in  due  season  the  highest 
ecclesiastical  preferment,  which  was,  of  course,  in 


1  The  Rev.  Dr.  Sanday,  in  the  American  Journal  of  Theology, 
pp.  95-117- 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  397 


both  cases  unsolicited,  and  certainly  not  beyond 
their  deserts  ;  while  Hort  was  never  more  than  a 
humble  parish  priest,  though  no  man  appreciated 
more  than  he  the  dignity  of  his  office.  But  he  so 
used  his  quiet  and  comparative  seclusion  as  to 
qualify  himself  for  the  very  highest  work — nay,  to 
do  work  of  the  very  highest  order.  There  is  safety 
for  some  men  in  an  early  escape  from  the  university, 
especially  if  it  be  an  escape  to  the  obscurity  where 
independence  can  be  cultivated,  congenial  work 
undertaken,  and  the  problems  of  the  time  wrestled 
with  in  a  spirit  and  with  a  labour  becoming  their 
gravity.  For  my  own  part,  I  never  know  whether 
to  congratulate  or  condole  with  a  young  scholar 
who  gains  a  fellowship  or  holds  a  tutorship  which 
keeps  him  up  at  the  university.  It  may  deprive 
him  of  the  opportunity  he  needs  to  develop  the 
best  that  is  within  him.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
common  room  may  be  stimulating,  but  it  is  not 
always  bracing ;  and  it  may  tend  to  the  creation 
of  that  most  impotent  of  tempers  and  most  de- 
pressing of  habits,  academic  conventionalism.  It 
was  thus  a  real  gain  to  Hort  that  he  for  so  long 
escaped  not  only  promotion  in  the  church  but  even 
office  in  the  university.  But  in  due  season  there 
came  to  him  what  may  be  described  as  an  honour 
and  an  office  which  was  all  his  own.  He  became 
the  ideal  of  a  band  of  younger  scholars,  a  sort  of 
unconscious  mentor,  a  literary  conscience  which 
exacted   independence,  accuracy,  and   the  patient 


398 


CA  TH0LIC1SM 


search  for  truth.  We  do  not  know  any  modern 
English  scholar  who  was  so  much  a  hero  to  scholars, 
so  progressively  loved  and  admired  and  trusted.  On 
his  immense  resources  the  obscurest  could  draw,  and 
could  be  certain  of  meeting  no  repulse.  His  silence 
was  at  once  a  cause  of  perplexity  and  a  source  of 
power,  for  men  wished  that  he  would  speak  so  as 
to  solve  their  problems,  or  to  help  them  to  a  solu- 
tion ;  yet  they  felt  that  before  the  silence  of  one 
who  had  inquired  so  long,  who  knew  and  had 
thought  so  much,  they  could  only  cultivate  the 
reverence  and  the  spirit  he  had  so  splendidly 
exemplified.  And  so  the  young  scholars  he  in- 
fluenced are  keeping  his  memory  green  by  attempting 
to  become  even  such  as  he  was,  or  such  as  he  would 
have  approved. 

2.  What  distinguished  these  men  and  made  them 
amid  all  their  differences  a  unity,  members  of  the 
same  family,  or  varieties  of  a  single  type,  was  the 
formal  attitude  of  their  minds,  or,  in  other  words, 
their  apprehension  of  theology  as  a  problem  in 
literature  rather  than  in  history.  Of  course  their 
attitude  was  not  in  all  respects  or  at  all  points 
uniform,  but  this  was  its  general  character.  Light- 
foot  settled  the  Ignatian  controversy  for,  at  least, 
our  generation.  That  was  his  great  achievement, 
where  his  really  great  qualities  showed  themselves 
in  their  most  perfect  form.  His  Clement  and  Poly- 
carp  are  not  unworthy  to  stand  alongside  his 
Ignatius,  though  his  work,  especially  as  regards 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  399 


Clement,  was  not  so  finished  as  he  himself  could 
have  wished  it  to  be.  But  as  his  distinguished 
successor  has  justly  and  soberly  said — his  edition 
of  the  Apostolic  Fathers  is  "a  monument  of  learning, 
sagacity,  and  judgment  unsurpassed  in  the  present 
age."  1  His  Pauline  Epistles  are  not  nearly  so 
successful ;  there  is  often  a  curious  hardness  in  his 
tone,  his  exegesis  is  not  seldom  marked  by  imperfect 
sympathy  and  defective  insight.  The  man  who  was 
both  by  friendship  and  knowledge  most  capable  of 
judging  him,  said  of  these  Commentaries  :  "  The 
prevailing  characteristic  is  masculine  good  sense 
unaccompanied  by  either  the  insight  or  the  delusion 
of  subtlety."  2  In  matters  of  thought  he  had  what 
seems  a  very  curious,  but  is  a  very  common  com- 
bination of  qualities,  a  real  love  of  positive  dogma 
with  little  interest  in  the  history  of  doctrine,  or  much 
real  comprehension  of  its  inner  meaning.  But  it  is 
in  dealing  with  literary  and  critical  questions,  as 
distinguished  from  questions  historical  and  exegeti- 
cal,  that  his  true  power  appears.  He  does  not  so 
much  construe  history,  as  compel  us  to  find  room 
in  any  future  attempt  at  construction  for  documents 
he  has  proved  to  be  authentic,  and  for  the  facts 
they  describe.  This,  of  course,  must  be  taken  as  a 
general  statement  which  admits  of  being  variously 
qualified,  as  by  the  ability  for  historical  criticism 


1  The  Apostolic  Fathers,  pt.  i.  Prefatory  note,  p.  vi. 
'  I  lort  in  Did.  of  National  Biography. 


400 


CATHOLICISM 


so  clearly  exhibited  in  his  dissertation  on  The 
Christian  Ministry,  and  his  remarkable  and  illu- 
minative discussion  of  the  martyrdom  of  Ignatius  ; 
but  in  the  broad  sense  it  is,  if  not  quite  adequate 
yet  true. 

I  have  found  it  no  easy  thing  to  write  these  sen- 
tences concerning  a  man  whose  memory  is  so  revered 
and  whose  work  is  so  pre-eminent  in  its  own  order ; 
but  unless  the  limitations  of  the  workman  be  recog- 
nized, his  work  is  certain  to  be  falsely  valued.  Dr. 
Sanday,  writing  under  the  sense  of  recent  loss,  con- 
fessed that  Lightfoot's  mind  was  not  naturally 
"  metaphysical,"  that  he  was  without  the  "  metaphy- 
sical fervour,  the  delight  in  the  contemplation  of 
mysteries "  combined  "  with  strong,  clear,  logical 
thinking,"  which  distinguished  Cyril  of  Alexandria. 
"  But  few  Englishmen  have  this ;  and  Bishop  Light- 
foot  was  English  to  the  backbone."  1  And  with  this 
judgment  Hort  agreed.  "  Lightfoot,"  he  said,  "  is 
not  speculative  enough  or  eager  enough  to  be  a 
leader  of  thought." 2  His  "  mental  interests  lay 
almost  exclusively  in  concrete  facts  or  written  words. 
He  never  seemed  to  care  for  any  generalization.  No 
one  can  with  advantage  be  everything ;  and  he 
gained  much  by  what  was  surely  a  limitation." 3 
Indeed,  Lightfoot's  mind  was  severe  and  rigorous, 
and  had  a  certain  vigorous  native  belligerency,  which 


1  English  Historical  Review,  vol.  v.  p.  214. 

2  Life  and  Letters  of  F.  f.  A.  Hort,  vol.  ii.  p.  89.     8  Ibid.,  410. 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  401 


Hort  described  as  "  its  correspondence  to  the  preva- 
lent English  habit  of  mind,  by  which  he  gained 
enormously  in  ready  access  to  English  people  of  all 
sorts." 1  And  these  are  the  very  qualities  and 
limitations  which  stamped  with  its  formal  character 
all  his  work. 

Westcott,  on  the  other  hand,  has  more  of  a 
mystical  nature  than  Lightfoot,  though  it  would 
be  incorrect  to  say  that  he  was  more  metaphysical. 
His  mind  has  more  affinity  with  literature  and 
criticism  than  with  philosophy  and  history.  He  is 
a  contemplative  rather  than  a  speculative  thinker. 
He  is  an  idealist  who  loves  the  sources  where  he 
finds  the  lights  that  give  him  life ;  he  is  not  a 
dialectician  who  loves  to  discover  and  follow  and 
weave  together  the  sequences  of  thought.  It  was 
real  affinity  that  attracted  him  to  "  John  "  ;  a  similar, 
though  a  less  complete,  affinity  that  drew  him  to 
"  Hebrews."  To  his  peculiar  idealism  Alexandria 
is  more  congenial  than  Athens,  and  the  personal 
equation  limits  the  insight  and  the  range  of  his 
interpretative  power.  His  mind  can  hardly  be 
described  as  pellucid  ;  he  loves  the  twilight  which 
subdues  the  stronger  colours  and  softens  the  harsher 
or  more  rigid  outlines.  In  his  discussions  in  literary 
or  historical  criticism  he  manages  often  to  leave  a  sort 
of  unsatisfied  feeling,  as  if  the  mind  had  not  got 
fairly  face  to  face  with  the  facts,  but  had  instead 


1  Life  and  Letlers  of  F.  J.  A.  Hort,  vol.  ii.  p.  411. 

26 


402 


CATHOLICISM 


looked  at  them  through  a  haze,  which  flooded  the 
scene  with  more  harmonizing  effects  than  would 
have  come  from  the  pitiless  light  of  day.  But 
while  as  a  thinker  he  appeals  to  a  comparatively- 
restricted  class,  as  a  textual  critic,  i.e.,  in  the  region 
where  he  deals  with  the  most  formal  and  exact 
of  all  literary  studies,  he  has  as  his  audience  the 
whole  of  the  learned  world.  He  can  speak  as  a  man 
of  science,  and  classify  and  marshal  his  authorities, 
and  where  they  are  in  conflict  decide  between  them 
for  reasons  the  competent  can  understand  and  will 
either  approve  or  condemn.  And  so  his  great  con- 
tribution, though  it  is  not  his  alone,  to  the  theology 
of  the  age — as  pre-eminent  in  its  own  order  as 
Lightfoot's  great  work  was  in  its — is  a  Greek  text 
of  the  New  Testament.  And  the  name  which  stands 
on  the  title-page  indissolubly  associated  with  his  is 
Hort's.  They  were  indeed  par  nobile  fratrum,  and 
the  text  which  bears  their  joint  names  is  the  fit 
monument  of  their  brotherhood.  But  the  precedency 
in  name  and  in  honour  will  only  be  fully  known  and 
determined  when  the  letters  which  passed  between 
the  two,  while  the  work  was  in  progress,  have  seen 
the  light. 

What  has  been  said  as  to  Westcott  applies, 
mutatis  mutandis,  partially  to  Hort  ;  but  it  needs  to 
be  qualified  by  being  enlarged.  He  was  a  man  of 
rarer,  in  some  respects  of  higher  qualities  than  either 
of  his  compeers.  His  nature  was  more  complex, 
and,  in  obedience  to  something  wiser  than  instinct, 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  403 


he  had  given  his  varied  faculties  a  no  less  varied 
discipline.  He  was  long  remembered  at  Cambridge 
as  the  Man  of  four  Triposes — mathematical,  classical, 
the  natural  and  the  moral  sciences.  This  was  a 
dangerous  beginning,  and  might  well  have  signified 
a  fatal  facility  for  drudgery,  but  no  capacity  for 
better  things.  In  Hort's  case,  however,  it  expressed 
a  real  demand  of  nature.  It  did  not  tempt  him 
either  to  sacrifice  his  life  to  his  academic  reputation, 
or  to  try  to  become  an  expert  in  all  or  any  of  his 
tripos  subjects  :  but  it  saved  him  from  the  limitations 
of  the  mere  scholar,  the  sectionalism  of  the  mere 
man  of  science,  the  abstract  idealism  of  the  mere 
metaphysician,  while  it  drilled  him  into  the  habits 
of  accuracy  and  methods  of  research  which  were  the 
factors  of  his  later  efficiency.  His  regard  for  facts, 
however  trivial,  his  love  of  research,  his  faculty  of 
delicate  discrimination  and  classification,  his  sym- 
pathy with  the  spirit  of  discovery,  his  mental 
hospitality,  the  welcome  he  was  ever  ready  to  offer 
to  a  theory  which  promised  to  shed  new  light  on 
old  things,  his  eagerness  to  discover  causes  and 
conditions  of  variation  or  of  relations  between  old 
and  new  forms,  different  or  cognate,  in  nature  or  in 
history,  in  morphology  or  in  MSS.,  sprang  out  of 
a  discipline  which  had  been  at  once  philological, 
scientific,  and  philosophical.  The  mental  attitude 
which  is  thought  to  be  typical  of  the  apologetic 
divine — the  attitude  which  looks  upon  every  new 
discovery  or  theory  in  science  as  a  masked  danger 


404 


CA  THOLICISM 


to  faith,  and  deals  with  it  as  such — was  utterly  alien 
to  him.  He  was  always  on  the  outlook  for  fresh 
truth,  for  new  ways  of  viewing  and  interpreting  men 
and  things.  On  the  morrow  of  its  appearance  he 
hailed  The  Origin  of  Species  as,  "  in  spite  of  its 
difficulties,"  an  "  unanswerable  "  book.  But,  while 
the  university  drilled  him,  his  intellectual  quicken- 
ing came  from  personal  teachers,  notably  Newman 
Coleridge,  and  Maurice.  They  made  the  ideal 
elements  of  his  mind,  the  regulative  principles  of 
his  thought ;  yet  their  application,  the  realm  in 
which  he  moved  as  a  thinker,  was  specifically  his 
own.  It  was  the  history  of  primitive  Christianity, 
construed  not  simply  for  its  own  sake  or  in  its  more 
phenomenal  being,  but  rather  as  the  parable  of  the 
universe,  the  mystery  in  whose  interpretation  all 
time  was  interpreted. 

In  a  quite  exceptional  degree  Hort's  own  intel- 
lectual problems  were  those  of  the  early  Church  ; 
and  in  him  the  great  thoughts  of  the  second  and 
third  centuries  seemed  to  be  re-incarnated.  To  him 
the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  was  no  mere  orthodox 
dogma,  but  a  living  belief,  a  whole  philosophy  of 
being.  In  its  light  he  read  the  texts,  the  early 
Church,  its  literature  and  its  creeds.  But  while  the 
thought  that  lived  in  him  was  ancient,  the  man  it 
lived  in  was  modern,  looking  upon  the  problem  of 
the  universe  through  eyes  that  science  had  trained 
and  that  philosophy  had  opened,  yet  with  a  mind 
which    faith  had   illumined.     It   was   this  which 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  405 


created  the  atmosphere  that  surrounded  both  the  man 
and  his  work,  which  filled  with  the  enthusiasm  of  hope 
the  disciples  who  got  near  enough  to  catch  some 
glimpse  of  the  things  he  saw  in  the  light  he  saw  them 
under.  And  yet  it  helps  to  explain  why  he  found 
speech  so  hard  as  to  be  well-nigh  impossible.  There  is 
something  singularly  pathetic  in  the  volumes  which 
have  been  so  lovingly  edited  and  published  since  his 
death.  They  are,  indeed,  but  shadowy  fragments 
of  a  once  vivid  mind,  as  it  were  half  articulate  words 
from  lips  which  seemed  silent  for  ever.  When  these 
posthumous  volumes  are  read  through  the  Life  and 
Letters  we  see  this ;  that  Hort's  inability  to  write 
what  would  satisfy  himself  sprang  from  the  conflict 
of  two  tendencies  within  him — the  scientific  and  the 
speculative ;  and  the  conflict  was  the  more  acute 
that  the  speculative  stood  at  the  end,  and  the 
scientific  was  the  way  which  led  up  to  it.  Of  all 
rare  combinations,  that  of  the  scholar  and  the 
thinker  is  the  rarest ;  and,  curiously,  it  is  often  a 
paralyzing  combination,  especially  when  each  of  the 
two  so  retains  its  integrity  that  the  scholar  insists  on 
all  his  facts  being  reckoned  with,  and  the  thinker 
that  every  several  fact  must  have  its  place  and 
reason.  And  we  see  in  Hort's  Hidsean  Lectures — 
long  brooded  over,  printed  in  part,  carried  about  for 
years,  revised,  re-revised,  growing  to  him  ever  less 
adequate — the  thinker  struggling  after  this  immense 
co-ordination.  His  son  says  "  he  viewed  all  the  move- 
ments of  the  time  in  connection  with  theology."  He 


406 


CA  THOLICISM 


did  more  than  this ;  he  construed  through  theology 
all  nature  and  history.  In  his  system  he  wanted  to 
find  a  place  for  the  documents  and  institutions  and 
persons  of  the  Church  ;  but  also  for  the  religions  and 
civilizations  of  the  world,  as  well  as  for  the  dis- 
coveries of  science.  Without  physics  theology  was 
incomplete ;  without  theology  all  the  speculations 
and  discoveries  of  man  had  no  unity.  And  the 
unification  was  to  be  carried  out  by  a  process  of 
verification.  The  experience  of  man  was  at  once  to 
authenticate  and  justify  the  truth  of  God.  And  so 
he  believed  that  freedom  was  as  necessary  to  theology 
as  authority  to  religion. 

§  II.  The  Oxford  Scholars  and  Divines 
i.  Benjamin  Jowctt 

I.  Of  the  two  Oxford  scholars  named  above, 
neither  may  seem  comparable  as  theologians  to  these 
three  eminent  members  of  the  sister  university.  But 
we  must  distinguish.  As  to  the  late  Master  of  Bal- 
liol  two  things  have  to  be  remembered — he  forsook 
theology  early,  and  he  occupied,  first  as  tutor  and 
then  as  head  of  his  college,  positions  that  were  little 
friendly  to  the  vocation  of  the  scholar  or  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  higher  learning.  But  it  is  easy  to  be  here 
unjust.  The  very  force  of  his  personality  and  his 
success  as  an  administrator  and  educator  helped  to 
obscure  Jovvett's  higher  qualities  and  achievements. 
And  the  clouds  that  did  so  much  to  hide  his  real 
character  were  not  always  lined  with  silver  ;  they 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS 


407 


were  often  very  dark  and  earth-born  indeed,  whether 
due  to  the  undergraduate  imagination,  which  dearly 
loves  the  mythical,  or  to  the  ecclesiastical,  which  has 
the  art  of  invoking  unconscious  invention  to  justify 
dislike.  The  Oxford  of  his  early  manhood  was  a 
stormy  place,  not  kindly  to  the  golden  mean,  or  what 
is  fabled  as  the  academic  calm  of  philosophic  mind  ; 
and  too  narrow  to  allow  the  hostile  forces  free  play, 
it  compelled  the  men  who  embodied  them  so  to  jostle 
each  other,  or  even  so  to  collide,  as  to  transform 
intellectual  difference  into  personal  heat.  The  his- 
tory of  what  is  known  as  "  the  Oxford  movement " 
has  still  to  be  written  ;  of  books  dealing  with  it, 
more  than  one  has  earned  a  name  which  once  fell 
from  the  late  Master,  "  a  reservoir  of  posthumous 
spites."  The  worship  of  fictitious  heroes  is  an  easy 
and  common  cult,  but  is  not  noble  or  elevating  ;  and 
it  has  had  free  scope  and  full  exercise  among  the 
Tractarian  men.  In  no  circle  of  men  -in  modern 
days  have  there  been  more  extravagant  loyalties  or 
violent  hates  ;  and  the  hates  were  not  always  al- 
lowed to  perish  with  their  occasion — they  survived 
among  the  men  who  became  "  Catholics  "  and  did 
not  altogether  d  ie  among  the  men  who  remained 
"Anglicans."  And  exaggerated  praise  or  immoderate 
admiration  is  as  little  just  as  extravagant  blame. 
John  Henry  Newman  has  been  made  to  live  before 
the  imagination  of  the  multitude  as  the  most  typical 
Oxford  man  of  the  century.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he 
is  typical,  not  of  Oxford,  but  of  a  school  that  has 


408 


CATHOLICISM 


now  and  then  attempted  to  find  there  a  home.  The 
men  typical  of  Oxford,  as  a  home  of  learning  and 
knowledge,  are  Roger  Bacon,  the  interpreter  of  na- 
ture ;  Duns  Scotus  and  William  of  Ockham,  the  one 
the  most  critical,  the  other  the  most  speculative,  of 
Schoolmen  ;  Cardinal  YVolsey,  statesman  and  munifi- 
cent patron  of  letters  ;  Dean  Colet,  student  of  Scrip- 
ture and  founder  of  a  great  school,  selecting  for  his 
trustees,  as  Erasmus  says,  "  married  laymen  of  honest 
reputation,"  because  he  had  observed  generally  "  that 
such  persons  were  more  conscientious  and  honest 
than  priests  "  ;  Richard  Hooker,  stateliest  of  English 
prose  writers  as  well  as  most  judicious  of  divines  ; 
John   Hales,  "  the  ever   memorable,"    who  loved 
breadth  and  hated  the  ecclesiastical  tyranny  which 
created  schism  ;   William  Chillingworth,  who  tried 
Catholicism   only   to    return    into    a    larger  and 
thorougher    Protestantism  ;    John    Selden,  jurist, 
scholar,  and  historian  ;  John  Hampden  and  John 
Pym,  English  statesmen  ;  Edward  Pococke,  Oriental- 
ist, the  last  representative  of  an  illustrious  race  of 
scholars  who  made  the  English  name  famous  in 
Europe ;  Joseph  Butler,  philosopher  and  divine  ;  John 
Wesley,  preacher  and  organizer ;   Charles  Wesley, 
preacher  and  poet ;  Adam  Smith,  moral  philosopher 
and   economist  —  founder,  indeed,  of  the  modern 
science  of  economics  ;  William  Hamilton,  metaphy- 
sician and  man  of  learning  ;  Thomas  Arnold,  school- 
master, historian,  and  man  of  affairs — these  are  the 
men  most  typical  of  Oxford,  representing  all  that  is 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  409 


finest  in  her  culture  and  truest  in  her  handiwork,  and 
most  beneficent  in  the  contributions  she  has  made 
to  the  common  weal.  But  under  the  spell  and  pas- 
sion of  Newman  she  renounced  the  serenity  in 
which  she  loved  to  walk  and  to  meditate,  and  turned 
her  home  into  a  sort  of  fiery  furnace,  glowing  with 
sevenfold  heat ;  and  the  youth  that  were  then  cast 
therein  had  to  be  made  of  good  stuff,  if  they  were  to 
walk  in  the  midst  of  it  unsinged  and  undismayed. 
And  there  were  men,  though  they  were  few  and  elect, 
who  stood  the  fiery  trial,  and  came  out  of  the  furnace 
without  so  much  as  the  smell  of  fire  upon  their  gar- 
ments. It  was,  indeed,  a  brave  thing  to  keep  a  quiet 
soul  in  those  days  of  quick  speech,  which  yet  was 
not  quick  enough  for  the  feeling  it  would  fain  ex- 
press. But  the  young  academic  Liberals  were  gal- 
lant men,  the  very  chivalry  of  their  time — Arthur 
Stanley,  Benjamin  Jowett,  Arthur  Hugh  Clough, 
Matthew  Arnold,  and  we  may  name  other  two, 
though  their  course  was  more  troubled  and  less 
straight,  Mark  Pattison  and  James  Anthony  Froude. 
These  men  have  not  been  made  saints  or  heroes  of ; 
their  party  is  too  critical  to  be  apt  at  canonization, 
while,  to  speak  the  blunt  truth,  one,  or  possibly  two, 
were  of  too  mixed  material  to  be  built  after  the 
heroic  model  or  made  into  a  heroic  form.  But 
Jowett  was  certainly  compacted  of  the  finest  stuff ; 
struggle  did  not  fret  him,  nor,  what  is  a  far  rarer 
thing,  did  petty  persecution  sour.  He  had  to  suffer 
the   martyrdom  of  silence,  but  he  bore  it  like  a 


4io 


CA  TII0L1CISM 


man  ;  and  when  he  found  speech,  he  spoke  like  one 
who  did  not  know  or  feel  that  his  lips  had  been  sealed. 

2.  We  have  to  remember  these  things  if  we  would 
understand  what  Jowett  did  in  theology,  or  the  spirit 
he  did  it  in.  The  work  which  he  did  in  this  field, 
the  commentary  on  certain  Pauline  Epistles,  with  its 
incorporated  essays,  appeared  just  ten  years  after  the 
Tractarian  movement  had  culminated  in  the  seces- 
sion of  Newman  ;  but  between  it  and  the  Develop- 
ment of  Doctrine,  which  marked  the  event,  the  dis- 
tance must  be  measured  by  centuries  rather  than  by 
years.  It  was  a  most  modern  book,  puzzling  by  its 
very  modernity,  misunderstood  because  it  was  so  new 
and  strange  a  thing  in  sacred  criticism  and  exegesis. 
It  was  subtle,  penetrated  by  intense  religious  feeling, 
often  distinguished  by  lucid  elegance  of  form  and 
phrase,  yet  with  the  frequent  lapses  in  the  sequence 
of  his  thought  which  marked  all  Jowett's  work  to 
the  very  end.  What  bewildered  the  student  was  its 
absolute  freedom  from  tradition  ;  and  the  curious 
thing  was  that  the  old  scholastic  tradition  had  not 
been  argued  down,  analyzed — an  airy  nothing — or 
otherwise  forcibly  expelled  ;  it  simply  was  not,  and 
for  the  author  seemed  not  to  have  been.  Paul  ap- 
peared to  be  lifted  bodily  out  of  the  world  in  which 
learned  interpretation,  held  in  the  leading-strings  of 
theological  formulae,  had  for  ages  made  him  live  and 
move,  and  placed  back  in  a  simpler  and  roomier 
world,  where  thought  was  more  fluid  and  less  fixed. 
Men  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  this  Paul ;  he 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  411 


was  too  much  of  a  real  man,  and  too  little  of  the 
scholastic  theologian  to  whom  they  had  grown  ac- 
customed. They  thought  he  had  been  simplified  out 
of  existence  and  did  not  see  the  profound  insight  of 
this  new  presentation,  how  cunningly  he  had  been 
unclothed,  how  deftly  re-clothed  in  his  hidden  and 
forgotten  raiment.  We  might  describe  the  commen- 
tary as,  in  one  sense  classical,  in  another  sense  his- 
torical, in  a  third  sense  secular,  understanding  that 
term  in  its  true  and  literal  meaning.  It  was  classical 
as  distinguished  from  theological ;  the  Epistles  read 
as  literature,  for  themselves  and  in  order  to  the  dis- 
covery of  their  thought,  their  writer,  the  forces  that 
made  him,  the  influences  that  surrounded  him,  the 
character  that  moulded  his  conduct,  and  the  men 
whose  friendship  or  hostility  affected  his  opinions 
and  helped  to  determine  his  policy.  It  was  historical 
as  distinguished  from  traditional :  the  canons  of  the 
schools  counted  for  nothing,  but  the  world  the  man 
moved  in  was  thoroughly  realized  ;  that  world 
Jewish,  Hellenistic,  Greek,  Roman,  was  made  to  re- 
live for  the  interpreter ;  then  the  mode  which  the 
man  had  of  using  the  Book  he  best  knew  and  most 
used  was  studied,  and  the  forms  of  thought  which 
were  his  rather  than  ours  subtly  analyzed  and  deter- 
mined. It  was  secular  as  opposed  to  isolated  and 
sectional :  Paul  and  his  books  were  part  of  the  age 
in  which  they  lived,  shared  the  life  and  reflected  the 
experience  of  their  own  time  ;  his  relation  to  the 
Twelve  and  to  the  Churches  were  explained  and 


412 


CA  THOLICISM 


illustrated  by  the  action  of  kindred  personalities  in 
distant  times  but  similar  circumstances.  Luther  and 
Calvin,  Wesley  and  Whitefield  were  summoned  to 
show  how  Paul  and  Apollos,  or  Paul  and  Peter  might 
differ  in  theology,  yet  preach  in  the  same  church  or 
address  the  same  people.  Philo  was  re-embodied 
that  he  might  express  the  ideas  which  were  current 
in  the  Judaism  that  Paul  knew.  The  work  was  that 
of  a  comparatively  young  man,  yet  one  who  had  far 
passed  the  age  of  paradox  and  crude  originality,  and 
who  lived  under  conditions  where  continuous  study 
and  concentrated  thought  are  least  of  all  possible  ; 
but  it  deserves  to  be  called  a  book  which  marked,  if 
it  did  not  make,  a  new  era.  It  was  a  book  which 
owed  much  to  Baur's  Paulus,  though  it  had  an 
originality  of  its  own  ;  it  was  English  and  not 
German,  for  it  was  less  ridden  by  theory  and  stood 
more  soberly  face  to  face  with  fact.  It  showed  more 
creative  and  constructive  power  than  any  of  Light- 
foot's  Commentaries  ;  and  as  it  represented  only  the 
firstfruits  of  Jowett's  labours  in  this  field— though 
alas,  the  firstfruits  were  destined  to  be  also  the  last ! 
— one  may  almost  venture  the  prophecy  that  if  he 
had  not  turned  from  theology  to  classics  he  would 
have  done  here  the  work  for  which  England  was 
waiting;  and  by  supplying  the  Broad  Church  with 
a  basis  at  once  Biblical  and  reasonable,  he  might 
have  saved  it  from  the  extinction  which  he  lived  to 
see  it  experience.1 

L  1  Cf.  Hort's  judgment.   "  Certainly  his  (Lightfoot's)  doctrinal 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  413 


ii.  Edzvin  Hatch 

1.  But  we  turn  from  Jowett  to  the  younger  scholar 
whose  work  suggested  this  paper,  Edwin  Hatch. 
Of  his  hard  struggle  for  a  foothold  and  even  a 
livelihood,  of  his  long  unrecognised  merit  and  un- 
rewarded labours,  I  will  not  venture  to  speak.  For 
years,  even  after  he  had  attained  European  fame, 
he  was  allowed  to  hold  the  office  of  Vice-Principal 
of  St.  Mary  Hall,  which  may  fitly  be  described 
as  the  least  of  all  the  cities  of  Judah  ;  and  even 
at  one  time  he  was  forced  to  undergo  the  exhausting 
and  depressing  drudgery  of  taking  private  pupils. 
When  University  recognition  did  come,  it  was 
parcelled  out  in  small  offices,  which  in  most  cases 
involved  the  maximum  of  uncongenial  toil.  These 
things  are  said  only  that  they  may  indicate  the 
difficulties  under  which  he  did  his  work  ;  but  they 
were  difficulties  that  neither  broke  his  temper  nor 
abated  his  resolution,  though,  without  doubt,  they 
overtaxed  his  strength  and  shortened  his  life.  One 
thing  more  of  a  personal  nature  I  will  dare  to  say. 

comments  are  far  from  satisfying  me.  They  belong  far  too 
much  to  the  mere  Protestant  version  of  St.  Paul's  thoughts, 
however  Christianised  and  rationalised.  One  misses  the  real 
attempt  to  fathom  St.  Paul's  own  mind  and  to  compare  it  with 
the  facts  of  life  which  one  finds  in  Jowett."  And  again, 
"  Doctrinal  questions  are  almost  entirely  avoided,  as  Lightfoot 
means  to  keep  them  for  Romans.  However,  that  is  certainly 
the  weakest  point  of  the  book  ;  and  Jowett's  notes  and  essays, 
with  all  their  perversities,  are  still  an  indispensable  supple- 
ment."— Life  and  Letters  of  F.J.  A.  ILort,  vol.  ii.  pp.  79,  35. 


4M 


CATHOLICISM 


He  did  not  escape  the  ordinary  misjudgment  that 
falls  to  the  men  who  take  their  own  line  in  theo- 
logical inquiry.  Men  who  were  party  leaders  did 
not  love  him,  and,  conscious  of  his  at  one  time 
almost  unbefriended  loneliness,  they  did  not  care 
to  conceal  their  dislike.  But,  though  we  had  much 
intercourse  and  many  confidences,  I  never  heard 
him  speak  one  unkind  or  ungenerous  word  of  any 
man  among  those  from  whom  he  had  suffered 
many  things.  I  well  remember  how  an  old  friend 
of  mine  met  him  at  first  with  some  reluctance  and 
much  misgiving,  because  he  had  been  accustomed 
to  hear  him  described  by  certain  ecclesiastical 
opponents,  one,  in  particular,  whose  name  occurs 
elsewhere  in  this  paper,  as  a  man  of  "a  cold  and 
hard  nature,"  of  "a  rationalistic  temper,"  "without 
faith  in  the  supernatural "  or  "  feeling  for  historical 
continuity  in  the  Church."  But  my  friend,  being 
himself  a  man  of  fine  character  and  open  eye, 
learned  in  the  course  of  a  few  days'  progressively 
intimate  companionship  how  utterly  Hatch  had 
been  misconceived  and  belied.  These  are  things 
I  had  no  intention  of  saying  when  I  began  this 
paper,  but  a  man's  work  can  never  be  really  under- 
stood unless  it  be  read  through  his  character. 

Hatch  was  not  a  scholar  in  the  sense  and  degree 
in  which  Lightfoot  was  one,  though  his  Essays 
in  Biblical  Greek  and  the  Concordance  to  the 
Scptttagitit,  which  he  planned,  organized  the  work 
for  and  did  so  much  to  carry  through,  show  how 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS 


415 


much  he  could  have  accomplished  in  the  field  of 
constructive  scholarship.  But  Hatch  was  strong 
where  Lightfoot  and  Westcott  are  weak,  in  using 
literature  for  the  interpretation  of  history,  in  analyzing 
the  forces  that  determine  its  course,  shape  its 
institutions,  formulate  its  beliefs,  create  its  tendencies, 
regulate  its  thinking,  in  a  word,  govern  its  develop- 
ment. It  is  doubtful  whether  in  the  delicacy  and 
success  with  which  he  handled  and  explained  the 
most  complex  phenomena  in  early  ecclesiastical 
history,  he  had  a  superior  or  even  a  peer.  His 
method  was  scientific,  at  once  analytic  and  com- 
parative, though,  in  order  to  its  appreciation,  it  was 
necessary  to  see  him  at  work.  He  was,  in  the 
strict  sense,  as  an  historical  inquirer  without  dog- 
matic assumptions.  The  Church  as  it  lived  and 
moved,  took  shape,  and  grew  into  an  organic 
structure,  was  something  to  be  explained  ;  and  the 
only  thing  which  could  be  regarded  as  an  explanation 
must  come  through  an  analysis  of  the  forces  and 
conditions  which  had  made  it.  To  say  that  it 
was,  in  its  political  and  organized  or  in  its  social 
and  secular  being,  a  supernatural  creation,  was  to 
lift  it  out  of  the  category  of  things  with  which 
the  scientific  student  of  history  could  deal ;  and 
such  supernatural  power  could  be  logically  invoked 
only  when  every  normal  and  intelligible  cause  had 
been  tried  and  failed.  To  postulate  a  miraculous 
cause  when  historical  causes  were  discoverable  and 
sufficient,  was  a  most  needless  multiplication  of 


416 


CATHOLICISM 


hypotheses.  In  harmony  with  this  principle,  he 
proceeded  to  examine  the  structure,  and  the  several 
forms  or  stages  through  which  it  passed,  in  relation 
to  the  various  conditions  under  which,  and  forces 
amid  which,  it  lived  and  grew ;  in  order  that  he 
might  discover  whether  there  were  any  cause  or 
causes  which  could  account  for  its  organization  by 
a  normal  historical  process.  He  began  with  the 
ministry,  for  it  was  the  most  obvious  point  for  him 
to  begin  at.  He  lived  face  to  face  with  a  theory 
of  it  on  which  a  most  portentous  series  of  claims 
was  based  ;  and  he  was,  as  it  were,  every  day  of 
his  life  challenged  to  accept  or  contradict  the  theory. 
It  was  characteristic  of  him  to  seize  on  elements 
and  aspects  of  the  idea  and  functions  of  the  original 
Christian  society  which  had  been  overlooked  or 
neglected  by  ecclesiastical  writers.  The  Church 
which  history  revealed  to  him  was  not  simply  a 
new  organ  for  worship,  equipped  with  the  officials, 
ritual,  and  authority  needed  to  establish  an  appro- 
priate cult ;  but  it  was  rather  a  ministry  of  benefi- 
cence, a  society  charged  to  create  a  new  social 
order,  where  the  distinction  of  bond  and  free  should 
cease,  and  to  exercise  those  charities  which  made 
the  poor  share  in  the  abundance  of  the  rich.  He 
examined  the  guilds  and  religious  associations  of 
the  Graeco-Roman  world ;  he  compared  their  con- 
stitution with  the  constitution  of  the  Church,  and 
found  analogies  that  made  it  probable  that  the 
new  Christian  societies  were  not  dissimilar  from 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  417 


the  old  associations.  Then  he  examined  the  Jewish 
communities,  found  special  features  in  their  adminis- 
tration, "  elders "  who  formed  a  "  synedrion,"  or 
local  court,  which  had  many  points  of  similarity 
with  the  Roman  municipalities,  and  these,  in  their 
union,  became  transformed  into  the  council  of  the 
Church.  The  process  was  then  analyzed  by  which 
the  bishop  rose  to  supremacy,  the  clergy  and  laity 
came  to  be  differentiated,  and  the  Church  organized 
on  the  lines  of  the  empire.  It  was  a  study  in 
ecclesiastical  biology,  the  formation  of  the  clerical 
orders  dealt  with  as  a  problem  in  natural  history. 
And  its  success  may  be  measured  by  two  things — 
the  violence  with  which  it  was  assailed,  on  the  one 
side,  and  the  admiration  with  which  the  most 
competent  and  dispassioned  judges  received  it,  on 
the  other.  One  thing  must  have  been  peculiarly 
gratifying  to  Hatch — the  letter  which  in  the  Sep- 
tember of  1886  he  received  from  Hort : 

"On  the  question  of  organisation,  I  imagine  that  we  agree 
more  than  we  differ ;  but  some  of  your  language  is  not  such 
as  I  should  naturally  use.  I  quite  go  with  you  in  condemning 
the  refusal  of  fellowship  with  sister  Churches  merely  because 
they  make  no  use  of  some  elements  of  organisation  assumed 
to  be  jure  divino  essential.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
rejection  of  theoretical  and  practical  exclusiveness  clears  the 
ground  for  the  recognition  of  at  least  the  possibility  that  other 
kinds  of  (relative)  jus  divinum  may  be  brought  to  light  by 
history  and  experience.  In  organisation,  as  in  other  things, 
all  Churches  have  much,  I  think,  to  learn  from  each  other, 
the  Church  of  England  as  much  as  any.  It  does  not  follow 
that  organisation  ouyht  to  be  everywhere  identical.   But  it 

27 


4i8 


CATHOLICISM 


may  well  turn  out  that  there  are  some  elements  or  principles 
of  organisation  which  cannot  anywhere  be  cast  aside  without 
injury ;  and,  at  all  events,  each  Church  has  need  to  ask  how 
far  its  peculiarities  may  be  mere  gratuitous  defects,  not  right 
adaptations  to  its  own  special  circumstances."  1 

What  this  means  is  obvious  enough  ;  it  showed  that 
Hatch  stood  no  longer  alone.  The  man  he  regarded 
as  in  the  region  of  literary  and  historical  criticism 
the  most  capable,  detached,  and  constructive  intellect 
of  the  English  Church,  substantially  agreed  with 
him.  To  Hort,  as  to  him,  a  special  organization 
was  not  of  the  esse,  though  it  might  be  of  the  bene 
esse  of  the  Church ;  it  did  not  forbid  "  fellowship 
with  sister  Churches,"  or  justify  "  theoretical  and 
practical  exclusiveness."  What  Hort  desiderated 
was  "  practical  tolerance  and  practical  brotherliness  "  ; 
and  he  regretted  that  "  Anglican  prejudice  and 
exclusive  theory "  barred  the  way,  but  felt  that 
even  these  "  needed  tender  handling  if  their  power 
is  to  be  sapped." 2  Reflection  and  research  had 
effected  a  revolution  in  the  quondam  High  Church- 
man which  his  son  and  biographer  has  not  appreci- 
ated or  even  perceived. 

2  But  Hatch  did  not  imagine  that  to  trace  the 
organization  of  the  ministry  was  to  explain  the 
Church.  On  the  contrary,  the  Church  represented 
to  him  a  most  complex  growth,  and  was  a  highly 
complicated  structure.  As  he  conceived  the  matter, 
it  was  not  explained  at  any  point  unless  it  was 


1  Hort's  Life  and  Letters,  ii.  p.  357. 


*  Ibid,  p.  358. 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  419 


explained  at  all.  The  Bampton  Lectures  were  but 
a  small  section  of  a  much  greater  whole  ;  they  did 
not  express  his  complete  view  or  cover  the  field 
within  which  he  had  pursued  his  researches.  They 
were  not  his  solution  of  the  problem,  but  only  a 
step  towards  it.  The  Hibbert  Lectures  carried  the 
problem  another  step  forward,  but  in  the  mind 
of  their  author  no  more  than  a  single  step.  Their 
special  question  was  as  to  "the  influence  of  Greek 
ideas  and  usages  upon  the  Christian  Church " ;  but 
the  question  had  so  many  ramifications  and  raised 
so  many  issues  that  adequate  discussion  of  any 
one,  let  alone  all,  within  the  limits  allowed  him, 
was  simply  impossible.  As  it  was,  the  ease  and 
force  of  his  exposition  enabled  him  to  perform  a 
task  that  would  have  been  to  any  less  well-furnished 
mind  simply  impossible.  He  analyzed  the  medium 
or  soil  in  which  Christianity  had  to  live  when  it 
became  the  religion  of  the  Gentiles.  The  mind 
that  assimilated  also  transformed  the  religion,  and 
the  transformation  was  only  explicable  through  the 
mind  that  accomplished  it.  He  sketched  the  Greek 
mind  as  it  was  in  the  first  and  second  centuries  of 
our  era,  how  it  was  educated  and  exercised,  what 
its  interests  were,  and  what  sort  of  life  it  led  ;  and 
he  indicated  the  relation  in  which  the  habit  of 
mind  created  by  the  vagrant  philosophers,  who 
speculated  and  argued  in  public  and  preached  so 
as  to  gratify  curiosity,  tickle  the  fancy,  and  exercise 
the  understanding,  stood  to  the  new  system  which 


420 


CA  THOLICISM 


came  to  claim  belief  in  ways  so  instructively  analogous 
to  the  old.  He  examined  the  methods  of  exegesis 
which  had  been  used  to  extract  reason  from  Greek 
mythology  and  to  reconcile  Moses  and  Plato,  and 
which  in  due  season  became  in  the  hands  of  the 
Fathers  now  a  weapon  of  apology,  now  a  means 
of  proving  doctrine,  and  now  the  instrument  of 
bringing  the  New  Testament  out  of  the  Old.  He 
analyzed  the  action  of  philosophy  on  the  Greek 
mind,  and  traced  its  influence  on  the  tendency  to 
speculate  and  define  in  the  region  of  belief.  He 
showed  the  distinction  between  Greek  and  Christian 
ethics,  and  indicated  how  the  Greek  penetrated, 
changed,  in  some  respects  superseded,  the  Christian. 
Then  he  traced  how  the  region  of  theology  proper, 
man's  intellectual  interpretation  of  God  as  the 
highest  and  most  real  Being,  was  invaded  by  the 
metaphysical  Greek  mind,  with  its  inherited  instincts, 
its  well-disciplined  habits,  and  its  elaborate  ter- 
minology ;  with  the  result  that  the  faith  of  the  Church 
in  a  living  personal  God  was  transmuted  into  a 
series  of  abstract  yet  rigorously  defined  dogmas. 
The  Greek  mysteries,  it  was  further  argued,  had 
affected  the  Christian  sacraments,  changing  them 
from  their  simple  primitive  sense  and  purpose  to 
acts  and  ceremonies  akin  to  those  associated  with 
the  ancient  secret  cults.  The  result  of  the  whole 
was  the  transformation  of  the  original  basis  of  the 
Christian  society,  and  a  correspondent  change  in 
the  whole  structure  it  supported. 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS      42 1 


Immense  and  intricate  as  the  problem  was,  it  by  no 
means  adequately  or  fairly  represented  the  question 
he  had  put  to  himself,  and  the  material  he  had  col- 
lected for  its  discussion.  He  did  not  imagine  that  the 
Church  had  been  explained  when,  as  in  the  Bampton 
and  Hibbert  Lectures,  the  forces  contributing  to  the 
formation  of  its  ministry,  the  formulation  of  its  creed, 
the  rise  of  its  mysteries,  and  the  evolution  of  its  ethics 
had  been  analyzed  and  described.  Other  and  quite 
as  integral  elements  in  its  constitution  had  still  to  be 
reckoned  with.  The  action  of  Roman  law,  of  the 
civil  organization  of  the  empire  and  its  administration, 
of  its  religious  legislation  and  institutions,  had  still  to 
be  traced.  There  was  the  constitution  of  the  Church, 
catholic  and  provincial,  national  and  parochial,  the 
functions  and  powers  of  councils  and  synods  as 
affected  by  the  imperial  system,  now  independent  of 
the  emperor,  now  dependent  upon  him,  and  the  whole 
remarkable  body  of  legislation  called  the  Canon  Law 
to  be  explained.  There  were  also  to  be  traced  the 
changes  which  the  growth  and  application,  the  con- 
solidation and  codification  of  this  law  effected  in  the 
discipline,  in  the  internal  organization  and  the  exter- 
nal policy,  both  of  provincial  Churches  and  the 
Roman  Church.  And  in  the  light  thus  shed  it  be- 
came more  possible  to  discover  the  state  and 
influence  of  the  localities  where  given  synodical  or 
conciliar  canons  had  been  framed  ;  to  watch  the 
development  of  the  clerical  orders  and  the  definition 
of  their   authority ;  to  study  the  methods  of  the 


422  CATHOLICISM 

Church  in  dealing  with  offences,  ecclesiastical  and 
moral,  lay  and  clerical,  the  manners,  conduct,  vices  of 
special  classes,  places,  and  times,  the  relation  and 
reciprocal  action  of  Church  and  State,  with  the  in- 
creasing emphasis  on  the  monarchical  idea  in  the  one, 
and  the  changes  due  to  the  weakness  or  the  strength 
of  the  imperial  or  regal  power  in  the  other ;  to  ascer- 
tain the  attitude  of  city  to  surrounding  country,  and 
of  province  to  capital,  with  its  correlative  action  in  the 
creation  of  diocesan  episcopacy.  And  he  had  made 
large  researches  and  collected  considerable  material 
towards  a  history  of  these  things,  though  nothing 
more  than  the  merest  hints  as  to  his  conclusions  and 
fragments  of  his  work  ever  saw  the  light. 

3.  These  are  dry  records  of  the  streams  of  fertilizing 
light  which  he  poured  into  dark  places  well  known  to 
scholasticism,  dead  and  living,  but  all  too  seldom 
visited  by  science.  In  his  hands  the  study  of  Canon 
Law,  as  some  of  us  remember  it,  was  distinguished  by 
vivid  reality.  He  made  one  see  the  Church  as  she 
lived  in  the  age  when  the  special  canons,  whether  of 
a  council  or  a  synod,  which  he  was  at  the  time  study- 
ing, were  framed,  the  age  she  lived  in,  the  difficulties 
she  had  to  meet,  and  her  mode  of  meeting  them. 
And  the  study  was  always  comparative ;  the  new 
canons  were  examined  in  relation  to  the  old,  and  the 
action  of  the  whole  on  the  constitution  and  history 
of  the  Church  carefully  traced.  By  his  method  he 
made  us  see,  as  if  it  were  going  on  under  our  very 
eyes,  the  whole  process  of  organic  change,  which 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  423 


transformed  the  free  Christian  societies  of  Syria, 
Greece,  and  Italy,  into  a  new  empire,  ecclesiastical 
and  Roman.  He  did  not  describe  the  process  with 
Harnack  as  the  secularization  of  the  Church  or  with 
Sohm  as  its  naturalization  1  ("  the  natural  man  is  a 
born  Catholic,"  "  Church  Law  has  risen  from  the 
overpowering  desire  of  the  natural  man  for  a  legally 
constituted,  catholicized  Church ") ;  but  the  process 
certainly  appeared  as  one  of  progressive  alienation 
from  the  primitive  ideal.  Nor  did  Canon  Law  ex- 
haust his  question.  Over  against  it  stood  two  very 
different  classes  of  phenomena,  one  in  the  region  of 
opinion,  represented  by  the  Heresies,  another  in  the 
region  of  emotion  and  worship,  represented  by  the 
Liturgies.  The  growth  of  legislation  made  the  Church 
partake  more  and  more  of  a  political  character,  and 
heresy  appear  more  and  more  as  a  political  crime  ; 
and  I  have  no  more  instructive  recollection  than  a 
private  discussion  with  Hatch,  in  which  he  illustrated 
the  influence  which  the  ideas  Augustine  had  derived 
from  these  two  sources — the  political  idea  of  the 
Church  and  the  criminal  character  of  heresy — had  on 
his  mind  and  system.  His  discussions  of  the  Liturgies 
brought  him  into  a  deeper  and  more  sacred  region  ; 
but  he  so  handled  the  question  as  to  make  the 
Liturgies  illustrate  the  growth  at  once  of  religious 


1  Outlines  of  Church  History,  pp.  35,  36.  This  position  is 
most  elaborately  and  learnedly  worked  out  in  Sohm's  great  work 
on  Kirchenrecht,  vol.  i. 


424 


CATHOLICISM 


ideas  and  of  customs,  especially  as  concerned  the 
relations  of  clergy  and  people. 

The  whole  of  the  question  he  had  set  himself  to 
solve  he  was  never  able  to  discuss  publicly,  or  even 
in  his  university  lectures.  And  so  much  as  he  did 
publicly  discuss  was  in  a  form  that  hardly  enabled 
him  to  do  justice  to  his  mind.  What  I  have  called 
the  immense  and  intricate  problem  of  the  "  Hibbert 
Lectures"  was  treated  in  a  book  of  only  350  pages, 
originally  given  as  a  series  of  twelve  lectures,  each 
being  of  about  an  hour's  duration.  Looked  at  thus, 
the  attempt  might  seem  to  say  more  for  Hatch's 
courage  than  for  his  discretion.  But  he  knew  him- 
self so  well,  felt  so  much  the  brevity  and  uncertainty 
of  life,  believed  so  thoroughly  that  truth  could  best 
be  served  by  early  and  frank  discussion,  that  he  did 
not  feel  as  if  he  had  any  choice.  And  the  death 
which  came  so  soon  and  sadly  showed  that  he  was 
wise.  But  he  felt  strongly  that  his  argument  de- 
pended for  its  cogency  on  its  evidence,  that  the 
evidence  was  cumulative,  and  that  its  strength  could 
only  be  fully  appreciated  when  its  lines  had  all  been 
drawn  out  and  mustered  and  marshalled  in  force.  It 
was,  therefore,  signally  unfortunate  that  his  theory 
and  its  proof  came  out,  as  it  were,  piece-meal, 
especially  as  his  style  and  manner  of  exposition 
increased  the  evil.  He  threw  himself  upon  his 
subject,  laboured  at  its  elucidation,  seemed  to  think 
of  it  alone,  and  of  how  best  to  compel  others  to  think 
of  it  as  he  did.    The  result  was  a  fine  lucidity,  a 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  425 


brisk  incisiveness  and  cogency,  which  made  it  easy  to 
follow  his  meaning,  though  it  hid  from  the  polemical 
or  the  undiscerning  much  of  his  implied  but  unex- 
pressed mind.  As  a  result,  he  had  more  than  his 
share  of  misconception  and  irrelevant  criticism.  His 
theory  of  the  ministry  was  criticized  from  assumptions 
as  to  his  beliefs  which  he  would  not  have  admitted  ; 
and  on  the  basis  of  a  localization  of  the  divine  energy 
and  an  externalization  of  the  means  of  grace  which 
he  would  have  vehemently  denied.  His  opponents 
spoke  as  if  he  did  not  believe  in  the  supernatural 
character  of  the  Church  :  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  his 
supernatural  was  larger  than  theirs,  not  limited  and 
defined  by  external  organs,  but  expressed  in  the 
whole  of  history  and  in  the  lives  of  men.  His 
purpose  was  as  positive  as  any  problem  in  science ;  it 
was  to  seek  from  history  an  answer  to  this  question  : 
How  and  why  has  the  Church,  as  a  whole  and  in  its 
several  parts,  become  what  it  is  ?  But  his  critics — 
though  only  so  far  as  they  were  English,  his  Conti- 
nental critics  understood  him  better — assumed  his 
purpose  to  be  polemical  or  controversial,  and  not 
merely  historical  and  scientific ;  and  they  answered 
him  as  the  person  they  assumed  him  to  be.  He 
spoke  of  himself  as  having  "  ventured  as  a  pioneer 
into  comparatively  unexplored  ground,"  and  con- 
fessed that  he  had  no  doubt  "  made  the  mistakes  of  a 
pioneer";  but  he  was  handled  as  if  his  inquiries  were 
a  process  of  dogmatic  affirmation  towards  a  pre- 
destined  conclusion.    It   was   complained  that  he 


426 


CA  TH0L1C1SM 


neglected  "  central  and  positive  evidence  in  favour  of 
what  is  external,  suggestive,  and  subsidiary":  when, 
as  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  his  evidence  was  as 
"  central  "  as  it  could  be  for  his  own  purpose,  though 
his  purpose  was  not  that  of  his  critics.  The  very 
title  of  his  Hibbert  Lectures,  the  "  Influence  of  Greek 
Ideas  on  the  Church,"  was  forgotten  ;  and  he  was 
rebuked  as  if  he  had  meant  that  Greek  ideas  had 
created  as  well  as  helped  in  the  formulation  of 
Christian  doctrine.  His  contention  that  the  Nicene 
Creed  was  due  to  the  influence  of  "  Greek  meta- 
physics "  was  answered  by  the  obvious  commonplace, 
that  "  Christianity  became  metaphysical  simply  and 
only  because  man  was  rational."  1  But  so  to  argue 
was  to  answer  what  he  had  never  questioned,  and 
contradict  what  he  had  never  affirmed.  He  had  said 
nothing  about  metaphysics  in  general ;  but  about  a 
special  school  or  type  of  metaphysics,  to  wit,  "  Greek 
metaphysics " — i.e.,  the  school  philosophies  of  the 
patristic  period,  with  their  elaborate  technical  termino- 
logies and  scholastic  methods.  And  his  problem  was 
to  inquire  how  far  these  had  contributed  to  the  be- 
coming of  "  the  metaphysical  creed,"  which  stands  in 
the  forefront  of  the  Christianity  of  the  fourth  century. 
The  process  of  production,  with  its  several  factors,  the 
worth  of  the  product,  the  value  of  its  form,  and  the 
sufficiency  of  the  form  to  the  ineffable  beliefs  it  would 
express,  are  all  distinct  questions.    Dr.  Hatch  under- 


1  Gore,  B  amp  ton  Lectures,  p.  21. 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  427 


took  to  deal  with  only  one  of  these,  and  it  was  no  very 
relevant  reply  to  deal  with  him  as  if  he  had  denied 
one  of  the  most  flagrant  facts  of  human  nature. 

It  lies  outside  my  purpose  to  examine  the  criti- 
cisms, relevant  and  irrelevant,  made  upon  his  method 
or  his  argument ;  but  as  I  have  said  so  much,  I  may 
as  well  say  one  word  more.  Canon  Gore  complains 
that  Hatch,  in  his  book  on  the  Influence  of  Greek 
Ideas,  left  out  of  consideration  the  theology  of  the 
Apostolic  writers.1  It  is  so  very  obvious  a  criticism 
that  one  would  have  expected  an  acute  critic  like 
Canon  Gore  to  have  jealously  questioned  himself 
before  making  it.  Surely,  if  Dr.  Hatch's  purpose 
had  been,  as  Dr.  Gore  supposed,  a  polemic  against 
doctrine,  and  not  simply,  as  it  was,  an  historical 
inquiry  into  "  the  influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and 
Usages  on  the  Christian  Church,"  he  could  not  have 
made  a  more  extraordinary  blunder  than  the  omis- 
sion for  which  he  is  censured.  It  would  have  been 
a  sort  of  unconditional  surrender  of  himself  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy.  But  for  his  purpose  such  an 
inquiry  was  not  necessary,  though  it  seems  to  me 
that  it  would,  if  it  had  been  prosecuted,  have  enor- 
mously strengthened  his  contention.  He  did  not 
analyze  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  though  he  intro- 
duced his  subject  by  an  allusion  to  it.  He  did 
not  attempt  an  exhibition  of  the  theology  of  Jesus, 
though  from  Dr.  Gore's  point  of  view  this  ought  to 


1  Gore,  Bampton  Lectures,  pp.  99,  100. 


428 


CATHOLICISM 


have  been  a  much  more  serious  omission  than  even 
his  neglect  of  "  the  theology  of  the  Apostolic  writers." 
His  work,  in  reality,  begins  outside  and  after  the 
New  Testament,  though  he  is  never  forgetful  of  its 
being.  It  is  a  matter  the  student  of  the  primitive 
Church  can  hardly  be  ignorant  of,  that  the  develop- 
ment of  doctrine  does  not  begin  where  the  New 
Testament  ends  ;  it  begins,  not  behind  it,  but  with- 
out it ;  though,  perhaps,  after  it,  yet  on  a  lower  level, 
amid  influences  less  strong  and  less  noble  than  those 
of  the  Apostolic  circle.  It  starts  with  tradition,  with 
confused  memories,  with  blind  and  stumbling  endea- 
vours to  comprehend  what  was  said  and  believed 
among  the  multitude,  not  what  had  been  written  and 
explained  by  the  Apostles.  The  New  Testament 
might  be  written  at  the  end  of  the  Apostolic  age, 
but  its  material  had  not  been  assimilated  by  such 
Christian  mind  as  then  was,  had  not  been  fused  in 
the  fire  of  experience,  refined  by  the  labour  of  the 
intellect  or  stamped  by  the  hands  of  thought.  Hort 
would  have  taught  Dr.  Gore  that  a  written  revelation 
without  "  discipular  experience  "  is  but  a  virgin  mine 
rich  in  unwrought  wealth.  To  deal,  therefore,  with 
the  sub- Apostolic  age  as  if  it  had,  or  had  used,  the 
New  Testament,  as  we  have  it,  or  as  we  use  it ;  or  to 
speak  as  if  the  Pauline  or  the  Johannine  theology 
had  worked  itself  into  the  collective  consciousness 
and  become  intelligible  as  a  reasonable  system  or 
even  as  an  oral  tradition — is  not  to  exhibit  the  his- 
torical or  scientific  spirit,  or  to  show  critical  compre- 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  429 


hension  of  the  man  who  has  followed  it.  The  age  ' 
when  "  Greek  ideas  and  usages  "  began  to  exercise 
their  influence  on  Christian  thought,  was  an  age  when 
for  that  thought  the  theology  of  the  New  Testament, 
as  we  understand  the  term,  could  not  be  said  to  be. 
And  when  it  did  begin  to  be,  the  mind  that  came ' 
to  the  New  Testament  was  one  penetrated  by  those 
very  Greek  ideas  whose  influence  it  was  the  function 
of  the  historian  to  trace.  Hence  the  "  leaving  out  of 
consideration  the  theology  of  the  Apostolic  writers  " 
seems  to  us  to  have  been  due  to  a  scientific  apprecia- 
tion of  the  problem  ;  the  criticism  of  the  omission 
to  be  due  to  the  absence  in  the  critic  of  a  like 
scientific  appreciation  and  critical  sense.  In  Hatch's 
own  words,  he  was  concerned,  not  with  the  "  spiritual 
revelation"  which  the  Apostolical  communities  had 
"  accepted,"  but  with  "  the  influences  "  which  enabled 
them  to  translate  what  had  been  thus  "  accepted " 
into  "  an  intellectual  conviction." 

§  III.  Comparison  as  regards  Mind  and  Methods  of 
Drs.  Hort  and  Hatch 

1.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  attempt  any  com- 
parative estimate  of  the  men  whose  work  has  been 
here  passed  in  hurried  review.  Indeed,  only  two  of 
them  can  be  fairly  compared — Hort  and  Hatch. 
They  had  many  points  of  resemblance,  but  possibly 
more  of  difference ;  and  the  differences  were  the 
more  characteristic.  Hort  was  the  more  courageous 
thinker,  Hatch  the  more  adventurous  inquirer.  Hort 


430 


CATHOLICISM 


suffered  permanently  from  the  inability  to  give  exact 
or  adequate  expression  to  his  mind  ;  Hatch  had 
much  of  the  passion  of  the  explorer,  who  rejoices  in 
the  double  delight  of  making  discoveries  and  telling 
of  the  discoveries  he  has  made.  Hort  was  fastidious 
to  the  last  degree ;  he  feared  lest  he  might  err,  for 
to  his  scrupulous  intellect  the  possibilities  of  error 
were  infinite  ;  he  feared  to  affirm  a  position  lest  he 
should  fail  to  prove  it,  or  lest,  on  further  research, 
his  proofs  should  turn  out  false.  But  Hatch  was  too 
much  a  master  at  once  of  historical  analysis  and 
constructive  synthesis  to  be  deterred  by  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  tools  he  must  employ,  or  even  by  any 
defect  of  skill  on  his  own  part  in  handling  them. 
He  was  as  much  alive  as  Hort  to  the  possibilities  of 
error,  but  believed  that  it  was  better  to  run  the  risk 
of  erring  than  to  leave  great  questions  undiscussed  ; 
for  the  way  to  success  lay  through  failure.  He  saw 
as  much  as  Hort  the  value  of  good  texts,  but  he  also 
saw  that  it  was  the  duty  of  science  to  work  with  the 
materials  it  had  at  hand  ;  to  wait  till  its  materials 
were  better  was  the  very  way  to  postpone  their  im- 
provement, was  to  allow  religious  inquiry  to  stagnate, 
and  to  cause  the  methods  of  research  into  the  past 
of  theology  and  the  Church  to  fall  out  of  relation  to 
the  whole  living  body  of  the  historical  sciences.  As 
a  result,  little  as  Hatch  accomplished  compared  with 
the  work  he  had  designed,  his  published  work  bears 
a  fairer  proportion  to  his  mind  as  a  whole  than  what 
Hort  has  left  behind.    Hatch  did  nothing  that  was 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS      43 1 


in  its  order  so  satisfactory  and  thorough  as  Hort's 
work  on  the  text  of  the  New  Testament ;  on  the 
other  hand,  Hort  has  not  started  so  many  questions 
or  done  so  much  as  Hatch  to  suggest  new  problems 
and  new  methods  to  the  workers  in  the  field  of 
ecclesiastical  history. 

2.  But  we  shall  better  see  the  significance  and 
the  difference  of  the  two  men  if  we  try  to  seize 
what  we  may  term  their  fundamental  and  regulative 
ideas.  The  passion  of  Hort,  we  may  say,  was  to 
conceive  Christianity  from  within,  to  discover  its 
intrinsic  quality  and  capability,  the  power  by  which 
it  penetrated  man  and  worked  out  its  idea  or  pur- 
pose. We  must  here  speak  with  caution  and  reserve, 
especially  as  the  material  for  the  interpretation  of 
his  mind  is  scanty  ;  and  it  has  the  double  disad- 
vantage of  being  as  a  whole  incomplete,  almost 
chaotic,  while  single  parts  have  been  elaborated  with 
often  repeated  toil.  As  he  said,  "  Beliefs  worth  call- 
ing beliefs  must  be  purchased  with  the  sweat  of  the 
brow."  His  idea  is  embodied,  or,  let  us  say,  has 
suffered  a  sort  of  incarnation,  in  the  evangelical 
history.  That  history  is  a  parable  which  sets  out 
the  mysteries  of  being  ;  in  it  the  inmost  truths  as 
to  God  and  the  universe  have  so  become  flesh  and 
dwelt  among  us,  that  we  may  even  in  its  visible 
things  behold  the  glory  of  the  invisible  idea.  The 
centre  of  the  system  is  Jesus  Christ ;  in  Him  the 
whole  mystery  of  God  and  nature  is  epitomized, 
interpreted,  realized.    His   significance  for  man  is 


432 


CATHOLICISM 


measured  by  man's  experience  of  Him  ;  the  larger 
and  deeper  the  experience  the  richer  the  significance. 
In  the  early  Church  there  was  a  difference  between 
the  disciples  being  present  with  the  Master  and  the 
Master  being  present  with  the  disciples.  The  record 
of  the  former  state  is  in  the  Synoptists  ;  the  record 
of  the  latter  is  in  John.  In  the  Synoptists  we  see 
the  disciples  learning  from  association  with  the 
Master ;  in  John  we  see  the  disciple,  all  the  more 
a  disciple  that  he  is  an  apostle,  enriched  in  thought 
because  richer  in  experience,  teaching  what  he  has 
learned  through  the  Master  having  taken  him  into 
association  with  Himself.  The  Fourth  Gospel  is, 
therefore,  neither  a  supplement  nor  a  correction  to 
the  other  three ;  it  is  their  interpretation,  nay,  it  is 
the  interpretation  of  the  universe,  not  in  the  abstract 
unities  of  philosophy — which  represents  "a  corpse 
god,  not  a  living  God  " — but  in  the  concrete  per- 
sonalities of  religion.  All  its  terms  are  vivid  with 
reality,  "spirit,"  "light,"  "love,"  "way,"  "truth," 
"life."  In  these  terms  God  is  conceived,  and  they 
are  the  terms  which  articulate  Christ.  "  He  is  not 
a  supplement  to  belief  in  God,  but  the  only  sure 
foundation  of  it."  "  Impersonal  names  are  dilutions 
of  the  truth  meeting  the  weakness  of  human  facul- 
ties " ;  even  of  God  "  the  personal  mode  of  expres- 
sion alone  is  strictly  true."  God  read  through  Christ 
ceases  to  be  a  silent  mystery,  the  darksome  back- 
ground of  our  collective  insolubilities,  and  appears 
as  light,  and  life,  and  love.    These  things  were 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  433 


realized  for  time  in  Christ ;  through  Him  they  are 
realized  in  us ;  as  they  are  realized  in  us  we  are 
united  to  God,  the  living  point  of  unity  being  the  Per- 
son who  creatively  embodied  what  we  are  to  realize. 

This  is  not  a  speculative  dream,  it  is  a  process  of 
experience  verified  in  the  life  of  the  disciples,  of  the 
Church,  and  of  the  individual.  These  three  ex- 
periences repeat  and  complete  each  other ;  that  of 
the  disciples  is  reflected  in  the  Church,  that  of  the 
Church  in  the  man.  The  more  inchoate  the  ex- 
perience, individual  or  collective,  the  more  confused 
and  the  less  adequate  our  apprehension  of  the  divine. 
"  There  is  a  truth  within  us,  to  use  the  language  of 
Scripture,  a  perfect  inward  ordering,  as  of  a  trans- 
parent crystal,  by  which  alone  the  perfect  faithful 
image  of  truth  without  us  is  brought  within  our  ken." 
The  pure  in  heart  see  God  ;  and  to  create  this  vision 
is  the  function  of  all  we  co-ordinate  under  the  term 
Church.  To  the  eye  that  can  see  it,  there  is  here  a 
large  philosophy  both  of  religion  and  of  history. 
The  end  of  all  things  is  the  inward  vision,  but  it  is 
late  in  being  reached,  and  to  it  many  things  are 
necessary  that  are  yet  not  of  it.  Outward  forms, 
tradition,  systems  may  be  methods  of  discipline  to 
be  used  and  valued  as  such,  with  seasons  and 
functions  of  their  own  ;  but  in  character  they  are 
provisional  and  transitional.  The  natural  expression 
of  this  mood  was  a  large  catholicity,  to  which  a 
political  Catholicism  grew  less  and  less  congenial. 
As  his  thoughts  deepened  they  widened,  and  out- 

28 


434 


CA  THOLICISM 


ward  matters  he  had  emphasized  in  earlier  life  be- 
came much  less  prominent  in  his  later  life.  "  There 
is,"  said  he,  "  no  '  Christianity  as  it  is,'  but  a  multi- 
tude of  Christianities,  each  of  which  covers  but  a 
small  part  of  what  is  believed  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury ;  while  this  as  a  whole  excludes  much  that  has 
been  believed  in  past  centuries,  and  the  sum  of  the 
whole  covers  but  a  part  of  the  contents  of  the  Bible." 

"  Christianity  consists  of  the  most  central  and 
significant  truth  concerning  the  universe,  intelligible 
only  in  connection  with  other  truth  not  obviously 
Christian,  and  accepted  by  many  not  Christians." 
"  The  history  of  the  Church,  if  it  could  ever  be  truly 
written,  would  be  the  most  composite  of  all  histories, 
since  it  would  have  to  set  forth  the  progress  of  every 
element  of  humanity  since  its  invisible  Head  was 
revealed."  These  broad  principles  followed  from  his 
fundamental  conception  of  the  place  and  function  of 
Christ,  and  the  "  discipular  experience "  by  which 
alone  He  could  be  interpreted  ;  and  they  show  how 
far  he  had  travelled  from  the  days  when  he  "  could 
almost  worship  Newman "  and  imagined  himself  a 
High  Churchman  somewhat  in  Newman's  sense. 

3.  Hatch,  on  the  other  hand,  had  a  more  purely 
intellectual  conception,  one  more  distinctly  inter- 
pretable,  whether  by  himself  or  others.  He  was  not 
a  mystic.  Nature  was  not  to  him  a  parable,  nor  was 
history  an  allegory  which  could  be  read  back  into  its 
divine  realities  by  the  eye  which  had  learned  the 
secret.    But  he  was  indeed  a  very  positive  thinker, 


SOME  RECENT  ENGLISH  THEOLOGIANS  435 


and  was  for  this  reason  inclined  to  regard  with  some- 
thing severer  than  impatience  those  who  took  acci- 
dents of  time  and  place  for  the  very  essence  of 
eternal  things.  God  was  to  him  the  Spirit  who 
manifested  Himself  in  history  through  the  spirits  of 
men.  Character  was  His  creation  ;  ethical  distinc- 
tions were  the  most  real  of  things,  moral  qualities 
the  most  sacred.  God,  as  He  conceived  Him,  was 
too  catholic  in  character,  too  varied  in  His  activities, 
too  rich  in  grace  to  be  confined  to  one  society,  or 
to  be  represented  as  making  certain  artificially 
created  orders  of  men  the  covenanted  channels  of 
His  mercies.  The  charities  and  simple  beneficences  of 
the  early  Church  seemed  to  him  worthier  of  the  divine 
than  the  priestly  claims  of  Cyprian  or  the  offices  of 
the  Roman  priesthood.  To  use  political  distinctions 
to  circumscribe  the  society  of  God,  was  opposed  as  an 
unjustifiable  interference  with  His  modes  of  action. 
But  he  was  scrupulously  anxious  to  avoid  the  specu- 
lative determination  of  history.  He  would  not  and 
did  not  determine  beforehand  what  the  Church  was, 
but  he  conceived  his  function  to  be  one  of  strict 
historical  inquiry.  Hence  his  real  contribution  to 
theology  was  his  problem  and  his  method.  His 
problem  was :  How  had  the  Church — understanding 
under  that  term  all  the  institutions,  usages,  and  be- 
liefs which  the  Christian  society  had  created  as  at 
once  an  expression  of  its  life  and  the  means  of  its 
maintenance — come  to  be  ?  And  his  method  was 
by  an  exhaustive  historical  and  comparative  analy- 


436 


CA  THOLICISM 


sis  to  discover  how  far  the  home  in  which  it  lived, 
the  conditions  under  which  it  thought,  the  forces 
which  worked  for  or  worked  against  it,  were  respon- 
sible for  the  formation  and  development  of  its 
peculiar  organization.  In  other  words,  it  was  the 
application  of  a  rigorously  scientific  method  to  a 
field  which  science  had  seldom  been  allowed  to  ex- 
plore. He  was  permitted  to  state  his  problem  and 
illustrate  his  method  only  in  part,  and  to  reach  con- 
clusions which  were  so  far  tentative  as  they  were  due 
to  a  process  which  was  incomplete.  But  he  fell  as 
the  "  pioneer "  falls,  who  has  opened  the  way  to 
disciples  that  have  learned  his  secret  and  are  eager 
to  follow  in  his  footsteps. 

But  here  our  study  of  these  English  theologians 
must  end.  They  have  shown  us  that  the  race  of  the 
great  scholars  who  were  great  divines,  has  not  yet 
ceased  in  England.  They  were  men  who  were  loyal 
sons  of  their  country  and  their  Church  ;  they  have 
enriched  the  English  mind,  adorned  the  English 
universities,  enhanced  the  reputation  of  English 
scholars,  and  made  even  the  Christian  religion  more 
honourable  and  more  credible,  by  the  consecration 
of  all  their  powers  to  the  investigation  of  her  history, 
the  study  and  elucidation  of  her  literature,  and  the 
exposition  of  her  beliefs.  May  not  the  men  of 
whom  these  things  can  be  said  assure  us  that  the 
race  of  the  noble  and  the  godly  has  not  yet  perished 
from  the  earth  ? 

March,  1897. 


X 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 
HILE  the  Life  of  the  late  Master  of  Balliol 1 


the  unity  of  one  spirit,  and  shows  everywhere  the 
hand  of  a  filial  affection,  fine  yet  discriminative.  It 
is  well  and  even  gracefully  written,  with  a  reserve  he 
would  have  approved,  a  moderation  and  an  accuracy 
he  would  have  commended.  It  is  tender  and  appre- 
ciative without  being  blind,  judicial  without  being  cen- 
sorious, reverent  without  adulation  or  idolatry.  Its 
errors  are  but  trivial,  and  mainly  in  matters  of  personal 
detail  ;  its  omissions  are  inconsiderable,  and  its  chief 
defect  a  too  uniform  smoothness  which  has  tempted 
its  authors  to  mask  some  ancient  fires,  which  are  not 
yet  extinguished,  and  touch  lightly  characteristics  that 
ought  to  have  been  clearly  filled  in.  There  are  no 
"  blazing  indiscretions,"  which  makes  it,  indeed,  all 
the  truer  a  mirror  of  the  man  ;  for  though  Jowett  was 
audacious,  he  was  never  indiscreet.  If  he  did  a  bold 
thing — and  he  did  many — it  was  not  by  impulse  or  by 
accident,  but  of  set  purpose  ;  and  he  was  too  wise  ever 

1  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Benjamin  Jowett,  ALA.,  Master  of 
Balliol  College,  Oxford.  By  Evelyn  Abbott  and  Lewis  Camp- 
bell.   Two  Volumes.    London  :  John  Murray,  1897. 

437 


is  the  work  of  two  minds,  it  has  throughout 


438 


CATHOLICISM 


to  explain  it  or  to  apologize  for  it,  being  well  content 
to  leave  it  to  be  justified  or  condemned  by  the  results. 
His  correspondence  and  memoranda  are  peculiarly  in- 
structive, and  open  up  unexpected  glimpses  into  the 
beliefs  and  ideals  that  were  the  springs  of  his  action. 
The  mind  revealed  in  his  letters  and  note-books  is 
so  pure,  the  aims  so  high  and  generous,  the  life  so 
unselfish,  the  spirit  so  silent  as  to  its  own  sorrows, 
while  so  tender  and  sympathetic  to  those  of  others, 
that  even  the  men  who  are  most  alien  from  his  creed 
and  his  policy  may  well  feel  compelled  to  respect  the 
man.  Still  the  biography  is,  if  we  may  say  so,  too 
biographical,  and  lacks  background.  We  are  not 
made  to  see  the  world  the  man  lived  in,  or  to  measure 
the  forces  he  resisted  and  overcame.  Much  of  his 
most  characteristic  work  was  indeed  imperceptible 
and  incalculable.  The  qualities  and  acts  which 
made  him  to  so  many  a  loved  and  revered  memory 
stand  written  in  the  lives  of  men.  He  was  great  as 
the  head  of  a  college,  because  he  was  quick  at  dis- 
covering and  apt  at  educing  what  was  most  excellent 
in  its  sons.  Only  those  who  can  read  this  biography 
in  the  light  of  the  living  background  they  form,  will 
be  able  to  see  the  central  figure  in  its  real  propor- 
tions, adjusted,  as  it  were,  to  scale. 

Jowett  was  certainly  a  man  who  deserved  to  have 
his  biography  written.  He  contributed  more  to  form 
the  mind  and  character  of  his  age  than  many  men 
who  occupied  more  conspicuous  positions.  He  fought 
a  battle  that  was  the  more  splendidly  successful  that 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


430 


it  was  so  long  without  the  outward  signs  and  spoils 
of  victory.  It  was  not  that  he  had  transcendent  gifts 
in  any  one  direction  ;  nay,  in  most  respects  he  could 
be  easily  surpassed.  As  a  scholar  he  had  superiors 
both  in  his  own  and  in  the  sister  university  ;  as  a 
philosophical  thinker  he  was  eclipsed  by  some  even 
of  his  own  disciples ;  as  a  theologian  he  early  fell  out 
of  the  race,  and  though  to  the  last  wistfully  anxious 
to  take  up  the  running,  grew  progressively  unfit  to  do 
it ;  as  an  administrator  of  the  university  he  had  the 
defects  of  a  man  whose  ends  and  means  were  too 
much  his  own  to  be  easily  adjusted  to  the  temper  and 
ways  of  an  assembly  which  can  only  be  deliberative 
by  being  critical.  But  when  every  deduction  has 
been  made,  it  will  still  remain  true  that  the  late 
Master  of  Balliol  was  the  most  potent  academic  per- 
sonality which  Oxford,  at  least,  has  known  in  this 
century.  To  have  been  this,  was  to  be  a  person 
whose  memory,  especially  as  regards  the  elements 
and  secrets  of  power,  ought  not  to  be  willingly  let  die. 

§  I.  Oxford  University  and  Colleges 

Jowett  is  not  a  man  that  can  be  studied  apart  from 
the  Oxford  of  his  day :  and  as  that  is  an  Oxford 
which  is  of  large  and  varied  significance,  we  may  be 
forgiven  if  we  preface  our  criticism  of  the  man  by 
some  remarks  as  to  his  university. 

i.  When  he  entered  Oxford  it  was  less  a  university 
than  a  city  of  colleges,  which  had  the  differences, 
jealousies,  antagonisms  of  societies  that  were  at  once 


44°  CA  THOLICISM 

neighbours  and  rivals,  rather  than  the  homogeneity 
and  harmony  of  a  corporate  body  whose  several 
parts  are  members  one  of  another.  Oxford  has,  to 
the  outside  imagination,  a  remarkable  unity  of 
character  ;  but,  to  inside  experience,  a  remarkable 
variety  of  temper  and  tendencies.  Each  college  has 
its  own  traditions,  methods,  capabilities,  ambitions, 
develops  distinctive  qualities  in  its  men,  and  appeals 
to  its  special  constituency ;  with  the  result  that  it 
affects  the  university  more  than  it  is  affected  by  it. 
The  college  is  a  small  and  exclusive  society,  with  a 
completer  and  more  direct  control  over  its  men  than 
is  possible  to  the  university  ;  it  deals  with  them  more 
as  boys  and  less  as  men,  interprets  the  status  pupil- 
/art's  more  rigorously,  enforces  discipline  more  easily, 
is  less  open  to  new  ideas,  and  is  more  concerned  with 
the  practical  function  or  use  of  knowledge  than  with 
its  expansion.  The  college  tutor  has  more  the 
charge  of  men,  and  exercises  in  a  very  real  sense  the 
cure  of  souls ;  but  the  university  professor  has  more 
the  care  of  a  subject,  a  field  or  a  province  of  know- 
ledge which  it  is  his  duty  to  cultivate  and  enlarge. 
The  more  a  tutor  feels  the  men  he  has  in  charge,  the 
less  will  he  have  of  the  scholar's  mind  ;  the  more  the 
professor  tills  his  field,  the  less  can  he  charge  himself 
with  the  care  of  men.  But  the  very  difference  of 
college  and  university  makes  each  essential  to  the 
other.  Their  combined  functions  may  be  described 
as  the  cultivation  of  learning  and  the  formation  of 
men,  or  the  communication  of  knowledge  and  the 


OXFORD  AND  JOIVETT 


44I 


culture  of  character.  And  these  functions  are,  while 
distinct,  yet  not  separate  or  even  separable.  It  is 
by  the  communication  of  knowledge  that  men  are 
formed  and  character  cultivated.  Men  live  the  more 
nobly  that  they  have  been  trained  to  think  the 
thoughts  of  the  great  masters  of  mind  and  morals  in 
the  language  they  themselves  used.  And  they  feel 
the  more  humble,  teachable,  and  reverent  before  the 
mysteries  of  being,  that  they  have  learned  to  love 
and  obey  nature  in  order  that  they  might  discover 
her  secret.  It  is  in  this  that  the  difference  lies 
between  a  university  and  a  learned  society — the  one 
cultivates  knowledge  that  it  may  discipline  men,  the 
other  prosecutes  discovery  that  it  may  enlarge 
science.  The  society  seeks  knowledge  for  its  own 
sake,  but  the  university  seeks  it  for  the  purpose  of 
evolving  the  humanity  latent  in  man.  Each  may 
equally  pursue  learning  and  encourage  research,  but 
it  must  always  be  with  this  fundamental  difference  of 
end.  And  it  is  here  where  college  and  university  so 
well  supplement  each  other ;  the  college,  by  its  cul- 
ture of  men,  keeping  the  university  from  sinking  into 
a  mere  learned  society  ;  the  university,  by  its  cultiva- 
tion of  learning,  giving  to  the  college  a  larger  atmos- 
phere and  more  liberal  mind. 

The  ideal  academic  state,  then,  would  be  one  where 
the  forces  represented  by  the  university  and  the 
college  existed  in  a  condition  of  equilibrium  and 
constant  interaction.  And  Oxford,  in  its  twofold 
character  of  a  university  and  a  city  of  colleges,  stood 


442 


CATHOLICISM 


in  an  unrivalled  position  for  realizing  the  ideal 
academic  state.  But  in  order  to  this  it  was  necessary 
that  neither  character  should  devour  or  enervate  the 
other.  Of  course,  it  might  be  possible,  were  the  two 
functions  separable,  to  argue  that  it  is  better  to  form 
character  than  to  cultivate  knowledge.  The  men 
whom  the  university  contributes  to  Church  and 
State,  to  literature  and  art,  to  medicine  and  science, 
are  a  more  solid  test  of  academic  competence  than 
the  books  she  directly  produces,  the  discoveries  made 
within  her  laboratories,  or  the  ideas  and  doctrines 
stamped  with  her  name.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
these  two  things  go  invariably  together.  Where 
intellect  is  not  active,  education  can  never  be  effi- 
cient ;  unless  knowledge  be  loved,  character  will  not 
be  cultivated.  In  other  words,  the  college  can  never 
do  its  work  unless  inspired  by  the  university,  nor  the 
university  fulfil  its  end  without  the  help  of  the  college. 

2.  It  is  significant  that  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, when  the  colleges  were  most  exclusive  and  the 
university  almost  moribund,  the  sterility  of  the 
studies  which  Oxford  pursued  had  its  fit  counterpart 
in  the  sort  of  men  she  produced  ;  for  her  most  illus- 
trious sons  then,  were  either  the  men  who  owed  her 
least,  or  those  she  was  least  inclined  to  acknowledge. 
Of  the  Oxford  men  in  that  century  three  stand  easily 
foremost  in  literary  fame — Butler,  Gibbon,  Johnson  ; 
but  it  would  be  hard  to  find  men  for  whom  the  uni- 
versity did  less.  Butler  was  no  raw  schoolboy  when 
he  entered  Oriel,  but  a  man  who  had  been  formed 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


443 


under  one  of  the  most  influential  teachers  of  his  age, 
if  we  measure  the  teacher's  power  by  the  eminence  of 
his  pupils.  We  know  that  the  problems  that  were 
later  to  occupy  Butler's  mind  had,  before  his  coming 
to  Oxford,  greatly  exercised  his  thought ;  and  we 
also  know  that  he  went  down,  on  taking  his  degree, 
without  either  his  college  or  the  university  in  any 
way  recognizing  his  eminence.  It  need  not  surprise 
us,  therefore,  that  we  find  so  little  trace  of  Oxford  in 
either  the  Sermons  or  the  Analogy,  or  that  she  did 
not  learn  to  appreciate  or  use  them  until  they  had 
been  well  studied  and  appreciated  elsewhere.  He 
appealed  more  to  the  Scottish  intellect  than  to  the 
English  understanding ;  and  men  so  dissimilar  as 
Thomas  Reid  and  David  Hume,  Adam  Smith  and 
Dugald  Stewart,  Thomas  Brown  and  Thomas  Chal- 
mers, united  in  owning  him  a  master  in  metaphysics 
and  ethics,  and  in  helping  to  make  his  name  famous 
in  his  own  school.  Gibbon,  again,  acknowledged 
"  no  obligation  to  the  University  of  Oxford,"  which, 
he  said,  with  less  than  his  usual  prescience,  would  "  as 
cheerfully  renounce  me  for  a  son  as  I  am  willing  to 
disclaim  her  for  a  mother."  He  entered  Magdalen 
"  with  a  stock  of  erudition  that  might  have  puzzled  a 
doctor,  and  a  degree  of  ignorance  of  which  a  school- 
boy would  have  been  ashamed  " ;  and  he  spent  there 
"the  fourteen  most  idle  and  unprofitable  months  of 
his  whole  life."  It  is  no  lovely  or  attractive  picture 
which  he  paints  of  college  and  university  ;  in  the  one, 
the  conversation  of  the  dons  "  stagnated  in  a  round 


444 


CATHOLICISM 


of  college  business,  Tory  politics,  personal  anecdotes, 
and  private  scandal  "  ;  in  the  other,  "  the  public  pro- 
fessors have  for  these  many  years  given  up  altogether 
even  the  pretence  of  teaching."  Yet  so  deeply 
rooted  were  this  state  and  these  abuses  in  "  law  and 
prejudice,  that  even  the  omnipotence  of  Parliament 
would  shrink  from  an  inquiry  into "  them.  Samuel 
Johnson,  after  two  years'  residence,  went  down  with- 
out a  degree  :  and  though  later,  as  became  an  exu- 
berant Jacobite,  he  idealized  the  place,  its  memories, 
and  its  idolatries,  no  man  knew  better  than  he  how 
little  it  had  done  for  him,  or  how  it  would  have 
spoiled  him  had  he  been  absorbed  in  its  dreary 
routine.  And  so  he  was  angry  that,  on  the  very  eve 
of  its  publication,  the  Master  of  his  own  college 
would  not  order  a  copy  of  the  Dictionary,  or  speak 
about  it,  or  even  invite  its  author  to  dinner ;  and  he 
said  in  his  wrath  :  "  There  lives  a  man  who  lives  by 
the  revenues  of  literature,  and  he  will  not  move  a 
finger  to  support  it."  And  when  he  met  his  old 
friend  and  rival,  Meeke,  whose  "  superiority  "  he  used 
to  feel  unable  to  bear,  Johnson  could  not  help  lament- 
ing that  a  man  "  of  such  excellent  parts  "  had  been 
"  Lost  in  a  convent's  solitary  gloom." 
And  if  the  sons  who  achieved  most  eminence 
in  literature  were  those  who  owed  her  least,  the 
men  she  most  harassed  and  despised  were  those 
who  accomplished  most  for  religion.  The  story  of 
the  Methodists  at  Oxford  is  too  familiar  a  tale  to 
bear  repeating,  but  I  may  add,  as  one  of  its  less 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


445 


recognized  incidents,  that  the  evil  system  and  associa- 
tions of  the  old  servitorship  left  for  life  their  ignoble 
stamp  on  the  soul  of  Whitefield. 

Of  course,  it  must  not  be  inferred  that  we  conceive 
college  or  university  to  have  been  as  black  as,  say, 
Gibbon  or  Whitefield  painted  it.  On  the  contrary, 
we  do  not  forget  either  the  learning  of  Bingham, 
though  it  is  only  just  to  remember  that  he  was 
compelled  to  resign  his  fellowship  and  leave  Oxford  ; 
or  "  the  classic  elegance "  of  Lowth,  what  he  did 
for  Hebrew  poetry,  or  his  fine  vindication  of  the 
university  against  the  insults  of  Warburton  ;  or  the 
genial  insight  and  healthy  piety  of  Home,  who  not 
only  commented  on  the  Psalms,  but  broke  into  verse 
to  describe  "  weeping  London's  crowded  streets " 
and  "  grand  parade  of  woe  as  Garrick's  funeral 
passed,"  and  who,  in  the  Olla  Podrida,  gave  this 
characteristic  apology  for  Johnson  :  "  To  reject 
wisdom,  because  the  person  of  him  who  communi- 
cates it  is  uncouth,  and  his  manners  are  inelegant 
— what  is  it  but  to  throw  away  a  pine-apple,  and 
assign  for  a  reason  the  roughness  of  its  coat  ? "  And 
we  ought  also  to  remember  that  in  one  region  of 
thought  Oxford  even  then  showed  her  old  intellectual 
activity,  producing  several  eminent  jurists,  like  Black- 
stone  and  the  two  Scotts,  who  later  became  respec- 
tively Lords  Stowell  and  Eldon.  But  when  every 
possible  deduction  has  been  made,  we  may  certainly 
say,  during  the  eighteenth  century  the  poverty  of 
Oxford  in  learning  was  truly  reflected  in  her  poverty 


446 


CA  THOLICISM 


in  men.  The  supremacy  of  the  colleges  was  fatal 
to  both  scholarship  and  culture. 

§  II.  Oxford  and  its  Sons  in  Two  Centuries 

I.  The  Oxford  of  the  nineteenth  century  stands 
out  in  striking  contrast  to  the  Oxford  of  the 
eighteenth.  The  attempt  which  from  the  middle 
of  the  century  onwards  was  so  strenuously  made 
to  resuscitate  the  university  without  depressing  the 
colleges,  has  had  its  counterpart  in  the  activity 
which  each  has  displayed  in  its  most  characteristic 
field.  In  the  region  of  thought  Oxford  has,  on  the 
whole,  produced  no  work  of  such  relative  eminence 
as  Butler's ;  in  history,  nothing  that  can  be  com- 
pared to  Gibbon's ;  in  literature,  no  man  that  lives 
in  the  imagination  like  Johnson.  But  there  has  been, 
on  the  whole,  a  much  more  uniform  and  disciplined 
mental  activity.  The  university  has  not,  indeed, 
been  without  creative  thinkers  in  philosophy,  and 
writers  in  history  who  have  a  fair  title  to  the  term 
"  classical."  Nor  has  it  been  deficient  in  learning, 
both  of  the  older  and  newer  order.  Yet  Avhat  is 
remarkable  is  that  its  performances'  on  the  arena 
of  the  intellect  have  been  surpassed  by  its  produc- 
tivity in  the  field  of  character  and  life.  Into  the 
causes  of  this  double  change  we  need  not  inquire, 
though  certain  of  them  are  obvious  enough.  For 
one  thing,  Oxford  has  lived  much  more  in  the  life 
of  the  nation,  has  been  a  sort  of  epitome  or  centre 
in  which  all  the  forces  that  have  moved  the  day  have 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


447 


been  intensified  by  being  concentrated.  It  has  not, 
like  the  Oxford  of  the  eighteenth  century,  cultivated 
treason  in  its  heart,  and  been  proudly  disloyal  to 
the  reigning  House  through  loyalty  to  a  House  that 
could  not  govern  ;  nor  has  it,  because  it  could  not 
continue  Jacobite,  sullenly  turned  Tory,  as  the  most 
agreeable  form  in  which  it  could  maintain  its  aloof- 
ness from  the  outside  [world.  On  the  contrary,  no 
place  agrees  less  with  Matthew  Arnold's  description 
of  Oxford  than  Oxford  herself.  It  is  only  to  the 
poet's  fancy  that  she  can  seem  "  the  home  of  lost 
causes,  forsaken  beliefs,  unpopular  names,  and  im- 
possible loyalties."  She  has  been  no  "  adorable 
dreamer,"  but,  on  the  whole,  a  matron  of  excellent 
worldliness,  who,  naturally  indeed,  retains  her  "  in- 
effable charm "  to  the  reminiscent  imagination  or 
the  mind  that  sees  her  from  afar.  There  has  been 
no  spot  less  serene,  or  more  scorched  by  fierce 
intellectual  fires.  Where  mind  is  young,  thought 
must  be  active  :  the  place  where  youth  is  perennial 
can  never  grow  old.  And  Oxford  has  for  our 
generation  such  infinite  significance,  because  within 
her  borders  so  much  of  the  unending  conflict  of  the 
new  mind  with  the  old  has  been  fought.  And  the 
conflict  has  been  prolific  in  heroes,  whose  monuments, 
in  the  shape  of  their  biographies,  stand  thick  upon 
the  field.  They  are  a  multitude  even  more  signifi- 
cant for  their  quality  than  for  their  number.  In 
the  first  quarter  of  the  century  the  change  begins. 
Coplestone  feels  in  a  dim  way  the  dawn  of  the 


448 


CA  THOLICISM 


new  era,  and  attempts  by  manipulation  of  terms, 
by  the  use  of  an  ingenious  but  not  very  profound 
philosophy,  to  awaken  the  young  mind  to  it  and 
create  room  for  it  within  the  old  forms.  His  pupil 
and  admirer,  Richard  Whately,  continues  and  perfects 
the  process,  acting,  as  Newman  said  later,  on  his 
younger  contempories  "like  a  bright  June  sun 
tempered  by  a  March  north-easter."  Into  the  Oriel 
which  Coplestone  had  quickened  there  came,  in 
Thomas  Arnold,  a  larger  and  humaner  nature,  with 
an  outlook  into  history  that  promised  to  do  for 
ancient  Rome  what  Gibbon  had  done  for  "the 
Decline  and  Fall."  Another  sign  of  the  coming 
change  was  the  rise  of  learned  philosophers  like 
Hamilton,  men  of  letters  like  Gibson  Lockhart,  and 
exuberant  and  imaginative  athletes  like  John 
Wilson.  Then  into  the  rather  exhausted  ecclesias- 
tical traditions  of  the  university  came  Blanco  White, 
with  his  practical  experience  of  Romanism,  vivified 
by  the  moral  passion  and  the  sceptical  intellect  which 
had  made  continuance  within  it  an  impossibility 
to  him. 

2.  But  with  the  second  quarter  of  the  century, 
what  is  regarded  as  the  most  characteristic  Oxford 
movement  of  the  century  began.  Its  causes  were 
many  and  complex.  One  cause  was  the  fear  lest 
political  change  should  do  for  the  Church  in  this 
century  what  it  had  done  for  the  Monarchy  in  the 
last ;  and  spare  the  divine  right  of  the  clergy  as 
little  as  it  had  spared  the  divine  right  of  the  king. 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


449 


Another  was  the  association  of  political  liberalism 
on  the  Continent  with  a  negative  rationalism  which 
threatened  death  to  the  higher  ideals  of  man  and  the 
State.  A  third  was  romanticism,  which  idealized 
a  past  it  did  not  know,  in  order  to  find  its  realization 
in  a  present  to  which  it  was  alien.  But  deeper  than 
these,  the  factor  that  moved  and  unified  it  all,  was 
the  splendid  sincerity  of  a  few  men  and  the  tran- 
scendent genius  of  one  man.  Now  that  we  stand 
at  a  distance  sufficient  to  enable  us  to  see  the  men 
in  true  perspective,  we  are  impressed  both  by  their 
extraordinary  intellectual  limitations  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  their  moral  and  religious  aims.  The  late 
Dean  Church  is  right  in  regarding  the  motive  of  the 
men  as  "  the  love  of  holiness "  ;  but  in  religious 
conflicts  the  ways  and  the  words  of  the  men  are 
seldom  as  holy  as  their  motives  or  their  ends.  We 
may  thus  say  that  the  interest  of  the  Oxford  Move- 
ment lay  in  its  men.  If  knowledge  or  if  intellectual 
veracity  had  been  the  conditions  of  success,  they 
could  not  have  succeeded  ;  but  the  instinct  which 
made  its  great  leader  issue  in  his  early  days  R.  H. 
Froude's  Remains  as  a  sort  of  impersonated  pro- 
gramme, and  in  his  later  the  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua, 
was  an  instinct  which  came  of  the  insight  of  genius. 

And  here,  if  we  may  digress  for  a  moment  into 
a  question  which  is  not  so  irrelevant  as  it  may  seem, 
we  may  say  that,  in  one  sense,  Newman's  great 
contribution  to  the  age  is — the  interpretation  of 
Newman.    He  is  the  greatest  subjective  writer  of 

29 


450 


CATHOLICISM 


our  age  ;  his  power  over  it  is  but  the  fascination 
exercised  by  his  revelation  of  himself.  In  his  more 
scholastic  treatises — in  his  dogmatic  works,  in  his 
attempts  at  historical  writing — his  strained  subtleties, 
his  violent  prejudices,  his  wilfulness,  and  his  often 
startling  pettiness,  make  him  one  of  the  authors  a 
dispassionate  student  finds  it  hardest  to  read.  But 
the  moment  his  own  experience  is  distilled  into  a 
sermon,  or  tract,  or  book,  his  peculiar  and  often 
almost  irresistible  fascination  appears.  His  Present 
Position  of  Catholics  in  England  is  a  sort  of  earlier 
Apologia  ;  in  it  speaks  the  proud  consciousness  of 
a  man  who  knew  the  English  feeling  to  Catholics, 
and  met  it  and  rebuked  it  with  lofty  irony.  His 
Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  may  be  described  as 
a  later  Apologia,  written  by  a  man  who  could  not 
but  stay  in  a  system  he  must  believe  infallible ;  yet 
stayed  because  he  was  able  so  to  conceive  what  he 
must  believe,  that  he  could,  when  convenient,  qualify 
out  of  existence  the  infallibility  which  guaranteed 
his  belief,  or  at  least  prevent  it  becoming  too  intru- 
sive and  troublesome.  In  his  Idea  of  a  University, 
ideals  and  experiences  which  he  owed  to  his  loved, 
lost,  Oxford  are  embalmed.  In  his  Grammar  Oj 
Assent,  in  a  greater  degree  than  in  the  Apologia, 
his  own  mental  history  is  analyzed  and  described. 
The  hymn  which  for  the  multitude  most  preserves 
his  name,  owes  its  exquisite  beauty  and  charm  to 
its  being  so  perfect  an  expression  of  a  mood  that 
was  the  man.    But  it  is  the  Apologia  that  conquered 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


451 


for  Newman  the  reverence  of  the  younger  generation, 
and  left  them  no  choice  but  to  believe  in  his  sincerity 
and  do  honour  to  his  motives.  It  is  doubtful  if  there 
is  anything  in  literature  to  compare  with  it.  Here 
is  a  man  who  has  practically  determined  the  judg- 
ment of  an  age  concerning  himself,  who  has  so 
interpreted  himself  as  he  was  to  himself  as  to  compel 
his  own  day  and  his  own  people  to  accept  the  in- 
terpretation. Yet  the  man  was  a  poet,  and  the  poet's 
autobiography  can  never  have  Wahrheii  without 
Dichtung,  were  it  only  because  what  has  passed 
through  the  imagination  is  transfigured  in  the 
passage.  The  unconscious  or  the  undesigned  is  ever 
the  truest  autobiography  ;  and  even  more  than  in 
any  Apologia,  the  true  Newman  may  be  discovered 
in  the  books  that  come,  as  it  were,  unbidden  out 
of  his  spirit,  and  seem  still  to  throb  as  if  they  had 
within  them  the  very  breath  of  life. 

It  has  not  been  the  fortune  of  the  other  men  of 
that  time  to  be  so  splendidly  transfigured  and,  as  it 
were,  embalmed  for  posterity  in  fragrant  spices.  But 
they  have  received  all  that  loving  hands,  uncom- 
manded  by  genius,  could  give  them.  John  Keble 
has,  perhaps,  been  happy  in  the  brevity  of  his  biogra- 
phers ;  but  his  name  may  remain  all  the  more  loved 
that  it  lives  as  an  ideal  rather  than  a  being  clothed  in 
the  coldest  black  and  white.  The  voluminous  Life 
of  Pusey  is  all  too  pathetically  faithful  to  his  morbid 
nature,  so  curiously  compounded  of  mystic  emotion 
and  pugnacious  obstinacy.    The  two  brothers-in-law 


452 


CATHOLICISM 


Samuel  Wilberforce  and  Henry  Manning,  have 
issued  from  the  hands  of  their  biographers  as  rather 
wounded  and  wingless  seraphs  ;  while  Ward,  even  in 
the  hands  of  skilful  and  filial  affection,  appears  as 
one  who  took  himself  more  seriously  than  a  sober 
and  critical  world  will  ever  be  persuaded  to  take  him. 
But  when  all  possible  deductions  have  been  made,  it 
will  remain  true,  that  the  University  which  produced 
these  men  did  a  greater  thing  for  England  and  the 
Church  than  either  the  Church  or  England  has  as  yet 
been  able  to  conceive. 

3.  But  over  against  the  Tractarians  stands  another 
and  no  less  imposing  army  of  Oxford  men.  Tait, 
sober,  cautious,  essentially  Presbyterian  in  temper, 
doubtful  of  new  things,  yet  most  wishful  to  find  a 
modus  vivendi  for  old  and  new,  is  a  good  type  of  a 
man  who  keeps  the  middle  path  and  seeks  safety  in 
moderation.  Next  to  him  comes  Stanley,  who  may 
be  described  as  in  a  way  a  Broad  Church  Newman, 
without  his  self-consciousness,  his  subtle  and  corrosive 
scepticism  in  thought,  his  passionate  imagination  and 
mystic  feeling,  whose  ideal  is  a  mixed  and  organized 
State,  as  distinct  from  a  graded  and  governed  and 
obedient  Church.  Stanley  was  an  ideal  biographer, 
as  Newman  was  a  master  of  idealized  autobiography  ; 
and  the  Life  of  Tliomas  Arnold  by  the  one  may  well 
challenge  in  the  eyes  of  posterity  comparison  with 
the  apologetic  "  Life  "  of  the  other  by  himself.  One 
thing  Arnold,  as  Stanley  represented  him,  and 
Stanley  himself,  did  in  a  quite  singular  and  intense 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


453 


degree — viz.,  reconciled  minds  that  would  otherwise 
have  remained  radically  alien  from  the  English 
Church.  Justice  in  this  respect  has  never  been  done 
to  either  of  the  two  men.  The  Anglican  Revival 
has  been  ungrateful  to  its  most  distinguished  and 
effectual  friends.  Their  idea  of  a  Church  as  compre- 
hensive as  the  State,  tolerant  of  differences,  zealous 
for  a  liberal  education,  which  the  clergy  might  share 
but  must  not  control ;  devoted  to  religion,  yet  aiming 
at  the  secular  weal  of  all  men  and  the  reconciliation 
of  all  classes  to  each  other  and  to  God — made  its 
way  into  the  hearts  of  multitudes  who  had  lived 
alienated  from  the  Church  in  thought  and  feeling, 
and  supplied  an  ideal  which  they  believed  could  be 
realized  in  modern  England.  This  idea  made  many 
gentle  to  the  Church  of  Arnold  and  Stanley,  who 
would  have  contended  to  the  bitter  end  against  the 
Church  of  Newman  and  Pusey.  The  Anglican  Revi- 
val has,  because  of  this  idea  and  the  men  who  were  its 
sponsors,  managed  to  penetrate  where  it  could  never 
have  gone  by  itself ;  and  these  distinguished  fathers 
of  the  Broad  Church  ought  never  to  be  forgotten  by 
those  who  have  so  largely  entered  into  their  labours. 

But  it  is  not  simply  ecclesiastical  men  that  Oxford 
has  produced.  I  have  but  to  raise  my  eyes  to  certain 
shelves  in  my  library,  and  there  stand  names  dis- 
tinguished in  literature,  in  politics  and  in  the  service 
of  the  State.  There  are  the  Memoirs  of  Mark 
Pattison,  who  would  have  been  a  kindly  and  loved 
man  if  he  had  only  permitted   himself  to  follow 


454 


CATHOLICISM 


nature  ;  and  beside  him  is  Conington,  whom  he  did 
not  love,  and  Henry  Nettleship,  who  loved  him,  edited 
him,  and  cultivated  in  kindred  spirit  the  old  Litem 
Humaniores.    Near  him  stands  T.  H.  Green,  with  his 
works  edited  and  his  life  written  by  another  Nettle- 
ship,  who  also  all  too  soon  was  lost  to  philosophy  and 
learning.    And  beside  them  is  a  book  which  speaks 
of  Arnold  Toynbee — the  Industrial  Revolution.  In 
the  domain  of  purer  letters,  A.  H.  Clough  sings  a 
song  of  yearning  and  of  a  hope  that  is  close  akin  to 
despair  ;  Matthew  Arnold  girds  at  imaginary  Philis- 
tines in  the  most  Philistinian  manner  and  mood, 
attempts  to  interpret  a  literature  whose  charm  he 
feels,  but  whose  mysteries  and  problems  he  has  failed 
to  master,  while  he  allows  his  better  self  to  escape 
in  polished  and  graceful   verse.     John  Addington 
Symonds  discourses  of  Greek  poetry  and  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance ;  and  affords  us  glimpses  into  a  sin- 
gularly brave  and  hopeful  spirit,  defying  disease  to 
arrest  his  work.     And  beside  him  stands  William 
Morris,  who  began  as  "  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty 
day,"  and  ended  as  the  seeker  and  seer  of  a  new  and 
higher  social  order.    John  Nichol,  too,  is  there,  a  man 
whom  all  men  loved  and  all  believed  equal  to  greater 
things  than  any  he  ever  managed  to  do.    And  of 
these  we  cannot  think,  without  recalling  the  names  of 
men  who  had  it  in  them  to  achieve  as  great  things  as 
they  did,  but  who  fell  before  they  had  achieved.  As 
distinguished  in  their  own  order  stand  the  statesmen, 
even  more  numerous  than  the  men  of  letters,  exhibit- 


OXFORD  AND  JOIVETT 


455 


ing  that  beautiful  compound,  so  distinctive  of  our 
English  public  life,  of  the  statesmen  who  have  not 
ceased  to  be  students  ;  and  who  have  known  how  to 
beguile  the  tedium  of  the  Senate  or  the  Civil  Service 
or  the  Bench  by  the  cultivation  of  literature,  prevent- 
ing deterioration  of  mind  in  administrative  work  or  in 
party  strife  by  maintaining  the  studies  which  had  been 
delightsomely  pursued  in  the  Oxford  of  their  youth. 

§  III.  Jozvett  as  Reformer  in  University  and  College 

i.  Into  this  Oxford,  then,  just  when  the  Tractarian 
turmoil  was  at  its  fiercest,  and  the  consequent  cycle 
of  academic  change  was  about  to  begin,  came  Benja- 
min Jowett.  What  we  have  now  to  understand  is  the 
reciprocal  action  of  Oxford  on  him  and  his  on  Oxford 
during  his  almost  sixty  years  of  residence.  To  it  he 
devoted  his  life.  He  regretted  that  so  many  of  her 
most  capable  sons  forsook  the  university  for  the 
wider  world  ;  he  deplored,  in  particular,  that  Stanley 
preferred  the  Deanery  of  Westminster  to  his  Oxford 
Professorship,  for  he  believed  that  higher  oppor- 
tunities and  a  finer  field  could  be  found  in  the 
university  than  even  in  the  Abbey  where  England 
has  loved  to  bury  her  most  honoured  dead.  He 
himself  did  not  feel  the  fret  and  the  worry  and  the 
distraction  that  make  continued  residence  to  so  many 
impossible.  Indeed,  his  own  social  tastes,  his  love  of 
varied  society,  his  desire  to  have  it  influence  the 
university  and  the  university  to  influence  it,  made  him 
the  man  who  has  perhaps  done  more  than  any  other 


456 


CATHOLICISM 


to  make  life  in  Oxford  harder  to  the  student  and  less 
kindly  to  study  than  even  it  was  before.  However 
that  may  be,  it  is  clear  that  he  rightly  appreciated 
the  value  of  Oxford  as  a  sphere  of  influence,  certain 
to  repay  lifelong  service  ;  and  no  man  who  studies 
his  life  can  deny  that  he  was  right. 

His  residence,  I  have  said,  began  at  a  time  when  it 
was  becoming  obvious  that  reform  must  lay  its  com- 
pelling hand  on  Oxford.  One  of  her  most  eminent 
sons  had  subjected  the  studies  of  the  English  univer- 
sities to  a  most  merciless  criticism.  Ecclesiastical 
strife,  and  its  mischievous  effects  upon  both  the  mind 
and  work  of  the  university,  had  showed  that  the 
terms  of  life  within  it  must  be  changed.  Universal 
subscription  had  proved  positively  disastrous ;  the 
abuses  which  it  had  created,  the  opportunities  it  gave, 
when  ecclesiastical  passions  ran  high,  to  rankest 
injustice,  had  been  proved  in  the  experience  of  all 
reasonable  men.  Then  increased  knowledge  of  the 
Continental,  and  especially  of  the  German  universi- 
ties, had  created  the  most  wholesome  feeling  of  envy 
and  of  self-criticism.  The  work  done  by  poorly  paid 
German  professors,  their  enthusiasm  for  science,  the 
success  with  which  they  had  cultivated  the  higher 
scholarship,  their  philosophical  activity  and  indus- 
trious erudition,  had  made  those  who  had  come  to 
know  them  feel  how  much  Oxford  had  to  learn,  and 
how  far  she  was  behind  in  the  work  of  science  and 
research.  In  this  work,  men  like  Dr.  Pusey,  and  still 
more  his  brother  Philip,  had  been  forerunners.  But 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


457 


in  Tait  and  Stanley  it  took  practical  shape  ;  and  an 
agitation  began  in  Oxford  which  meant  that  the 
university  must  be  resuscitated  and  a  new  order  of 
things  instituted,  or  rather  an  old  order  restored. 
This  seemed  at  first  a  simpler  thing  than  it  was  soon 
found  to  be.  The  colleges  had  practically  eaten  up 
the  university  ;  and  it  was  no  easy  matter  to  find  how 
they  could  be  got  to  disgorge,  or  how  the  disjecta 
membra  could  be  built  into  a  homogeneous  structure. 
It  was  thought  that  the  system  of  professorships 
might  be  revived  and  extended,  that  new  branches  of 
knowledge  might  be  added  to  its  studies,  new  schools 
created,  the  university  more  adequately  equipped  for 
learning  and  research.  And  it  was  hoped  that  thus 
Oxford  might  be  adapted  to  modern  conditions  and 
needs.  Then  there  were  multitudes  outside  the 
university  seeking  admission  ;  and  there  was  within 
a  corresponding  desire  to  find  terms  which  would 
make  the  entrance  of  fresher  minds  possible  and 
their  assimilation  real. 

Now  Jowett  sympathized  with  these  views  only  in 
part.  While  from  the  first  an  advocate  of  university 
reform,  he  could  hardly  be  called  an  efficient  univer- 
sity reformer ;  on  the  contrary,  his  policy  was  in 
many  respects  unwise  and  his  action  mischievous. 
He  served  Oxford  by  what  he  did  for  Balliol.  He 
showed  not  what  a  university  ought  to  be,  but  what  a 
college  could  do  for  the  university.  His  policy  and 
ideals  were  not  so  much  those  that  become  a  uni- 
versity as  those  proper  to  a  college ;  his  qualities, 


458 


CATHOLICISM 


intellectual,  moral,  and  administrative,  were  of  a  kind 
that  acted  with  intense  force  within  the  restricted 
area  of  the  college,  but  would  have  wasted  and  spent 
themselves  fruitlessly  in  the  larger  arena  of  the 
university.  He  had  what  may  be  described  as  the 
tutorial  character,  but  not  the  professorial  mind. 
His  character  was  more  powerful  to  influence  than 
to  please  ;  his  prelections  pleased  more  than  they 
influenced.  And  so,  true  to  his  nature,  he  had  more 
faith  in  the  college  than  belief  in  the  university  ;  he 
believed  more  in  examinations  than  in  lectures. 
Personal  superintendence  seemed  to  him  a  more  vital 
matter  than  the  dubious  learning  of  the  class-room, 
or  the  inchoate  erudition  of  a  not  always  coherent  or 
lucid  lecturer.  But  what  probably  weighed  with  him 
still  more  was  the  practical  difficulty  of  shaping  the 
policy  of  a  university  whose  ultimate  authority  was 
a  Convocation  composed  of  members  who  could  be 
summoned  from  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  kingdom, 
and  who  in  many  cases  were  not  qualified  to  discuss 
the  question  on  which  they  were  convened  to  vote. 
Reason  governs  as  little  in  academic  as  in  parlia- 
mentary politics.  And  in  a  body  which  was  not 
educated  by  experience  or  even  frequent  discussion, 
but  only  came  together  on  special  occasions  to  do  a 
special  thing,  great  questions  could  never  be  seriously 
considered  ;  and  were  more  likely  to  be  settled  by 
gusts  of  passion  than  by  deliberative  reason,  or  by 
arguments  more  whimsically  subtle  than  morally 
and  intellectually  cogent.    In  such  a  case  unreason  is 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


459 


surer  to  reign  than  reasonableness.  And  Jowett  had 
known  Convocation  summoned  to  do  the  most  high- 
handed things,  and  had  seen  it  do  them.  And  so  he 
came  to  doubt  its  competence  and  to  expect  no  re- 
form in  a  body  over  which  Convocation  remained  in 
a  sense  legislatively  supreme.  In  this  he  was  by  no 
means  singular,  for  even  in  Stanley's  "  Life  "  we  find 
an  ironical  account  of  its  proceedings  illustrated  by  a 
letter  to  the  Times,  with  the  characteristic  signature, 
"  An  M.  A.  who  abhors  Convocation." 

2.  But  while  to  Jowett  the  university  was  an  in- 
tractable body,  the  college  was,  if  not  a  manageable 
society,  yet  a  society  where  it  was  possible  for  a 
potent  individual  to  accomplish  something.  And  it 
was  characteristic  of  Jowett  to  refuse  to  lessen  his 
personal  influence  by  forcing  it  to  attempt  what  it 
could  not  perform.  And  so  his  energies  and  am- 
bitions concentrated  themselves  upon  his  college. 
Balliol  was  to  him  wife  and  child,  home  and  family. 
He  lived  for  it,  gave  himself  up  to  it.  It  used  to  be 
said  that  whatever  uncertainty  there  was  as  to  'the 
Master's  faith,  there  was  none  as  to  his  belief  in 
Balliol.  He  watched  its  undergraduates  with  the 
keenest  and  most  jealous  eyes  ;  he  followed  their 
later  careers  with  the  solicitude  of  a  parent,  appreci- 
ative of  every  act  and  achievement  which  reflected 
honour  on  the  college.  He  laboured  unweariedly  to 
make  it  famous  ;  replenished  its  ranks  from  the 
capable  among  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men ; 
carried  out  his  dream  of  university  extension,  which 


460 


CATHOLICISM 


was  to  secure  to  poorer  students  the  advantages  of 
tuition  without  the  expenses  of  in-college  residence, 
and  rigorously  enforced  his  method  of  personal 
discipline  and  superintendence.  He  gave  generously 
from  his  own  resources,  and  persuaded  his  friends  to 
give  generously  from  theirs.  While  no  lover  of 
aestheticism,  he  pressed  music  into  the  service  of  the 
college,  and  made  the  Sunday  evening  concert  a  new 
educative  agency.  While  no  devotee  of  athleticism, 
he  supplied  the  college  with  a  field  where  its  young 
barbarians  could  play.  On  the  one  side,  he  dealt 
with  Balliol  as  if  it  were  a  school ;  on  the  other,  as  if 
it  were  a  university  ;  with  the  result  that,  though  he 
stepped  into  a  great  inheritance  when  he  became 
Master,  he  yet  left  to  his  successor  the  inheritance 
vastly  enlarged  and  enhanced.  It  was  indeed  a  high 
achievement  to  make  and  to  keep,  in  a  period  when 
new  studies  meant  new  expenditure,  one  of  the 
poorer  colleges  in  the  university  the  college  whose 
scholarships  were  "  the  blue  ribbon "  for  which 
English  public  schools  eagerly  competed,  and  on 
whose  books  the  men  most  ambitious  of  academic 
distinction  were  eager  to  enrol  their  names. 

§  IV.  Jowett  as  Scholar  and  Thinker 

But  we  must  look  beyond  the  Master  of  Balliol,  and 
consider  other  sides  of  his  picturesque  personality. 

i.  I  have  already  said  that  his  chief  claim  to  re- 
membrance will  not  rest  on  his  scholarship.  He  had, 
indeed,  many  fine  intellectual  qualities,  but  they  were 


OXFORD  AND  JOIVETT 


literary  rather  than  scientific,  critical  and  discursive 
rather  than  philosophical.  He  thought  by  intuition, 
rather  than  by  any  process  of  ratiocination.  In 
scholarship,  properly  so  called,  he  had  only  a  remote 
interest ;  for  its  severer  methods  he  had  a  positive 
distaste ;  for  its  history  he  had  little  appreciation,  and 
few  of  its  great  names  appealed  either  to  his  admir- 
ation or  respect.  This  rather  curious  defect  comes 
out  in  the  biography  in  a  very  characteristic  way — 
the  paucity  of  letters  to  scholars,  or  concerned  with 
scholarship.  There  are  many  letters  to  scholarly 
pupils  and  friends,  but  few  on  questions  of  purely 
scientific  or  philosophical  interest.  He  writes  to 
many  distinguished  people,  both  men  and  women. 
His  letters  are  full  of  wisdom,  whether  secular  or 
spiritual,  of  fine  feeling,  of  delicate  insight,  of  a  high 
sense  both  of  his  own  duty  and  of  theirs.  They 
express  a  large  conception  of  the  significance  of  life 
and  its  possibilities,  and  the  obligation  common  to 
himself  and  his  correspondents  to  make  the  most  out 
of  it.  These  letters  cannot  do  other  than  raise  the 
general  idea  of  the  man.  He  was  often  suspected  of 
paying  too  assiduous  court  to  the  great,  and  of  loving 
to  surround  himself  with  persons  of  name.  He 
would,  in  a  sense,  have  pleaded  guilty  to  the  charge, 
for  he  had  a  keen  perception  of  the  immense  possi- 
bilities associated  with  station.    He  felt  that  an 

It 

aristocracy  of  rank  which  was  also  an  aristocracy  of 
intellect  and  character  had  opportunities  such  as 
were  granted  to  no  other  class  ;  and  he  frankly 


462 


CATHOLICISM 


cultivated  the  society  that  he  held  to  promise  most 
for  the  culture  and  character  of  the  State.  But 
certainly  no  man  ever  lay  less  open  to  the  charge  of 
toadying  to  the  great.  If  their  advisers  had  always 
been  as  honest,  yet  delicate  and  sensitive,  in  advice, 
their  lives  would  have  accomplished  more  for  the 
common  good.  We  are,  therefore,  not  at  all  surprised 
at  the  number  of  letters  to  women  in  high  places  ; 
and  I  confess  that  if  his  circle  had  been  larger,  and 
his  letters  always  as  charming  and  simple  and  sincere, 
it  would  have  been  the  better  for  those  who  seem 
destined  to  become  ever  more  potent  forces  in  our 
public  life.  But  what  does  surprise  one  is  that  he 
seems  to  care  so  little  for  learning  ;  that  his  corre- 
spondence has  so  little  to  do  with  it  or  with  the 
learner.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  man  who  was  the 
head  of  Balliol,  a  representative  Oxford  scholar, 
should  yet  have  had  so  small  intercourse  with  the 
scholars  either  of  Great  Britain  or  the  Continent,  and 
have  been  so  little  concerned  in  the  discussions,  the 
investigations,  the  discoveries,  the  controversies,  that 
during  his  long  and  active  life  agitated  the  world  of 
letters. 

I  have  called  this  want  of  interest  in  learning  and 
the  learned  characteristic  of  the  man,  and  so  it  was. 
Though  a  student  of  Plato,  yet  Platonic  scholarship 
did  not  interest  him,  and  for  its  history  he  had  some- 
thing that  may  almost  be  described  as  aversion.  It 
never  seemed  to  him  like  a  real  chapter  in  the  history 
of  the  human  mind,  significant  both  of  its  growth  and 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


463 


of  the  influence  of  the  great  master  on  whose  interpre- 
tation he  himself  so  long  and  so  genially  laboured. 
He  was  impatient  with  the  older  scholarship,  because 
its  methods  were  so  unlike  his  own,  and  seemed  to 
him  violent  and  subjective.  Yet  subjectivity  was  the 
very  note  of  his  own  work,  and  made  his  Platonic 
studies  and  dissertations  so  largely  a  reflection  of 
himself.  He  disliked  systematic  thinking  in  whatever 
field.  He  feared  metaphysics,  deplored  their  fascina- 
tion for  the  young  mind,  regretted  their  reign  within 
his  own  college,  even  under  a  man  he  so  much 
admired  and  loved  as  T.  H.  Green.  He  warned  so 
distinguished  a  philosopher  as  his  successor  in  the 
mastership  against  a  too  devoted  cultivation  of  meta- 
physics. He  dreaded  their  effect  on  literature  and 
on  knowledge,  which  he  somehow  persuaded  himself 
to  regard  as  injuriously  affected  by  constructive  and 
systematic  thinking,  The  continuity  which  was  so 
alien  to  his  own  habits  of  thought,  he  suspected  when 
it  was  incorporated  in  men  who  loved  thought  all  the 
more  that  it  was  concatenated  and  could  be  expressed 
in  a  progressive  dialectic. 

2.  The  same  defect  is  seen  in  his  relation,  or  rather 
want  of  relation,  to  the  more  speculative  spirits  and 
tendencies  of  his  own  time.  This  is  most  apparent  in 
regard  to  one  with  whose  aims  he  had  much  in 
common,  Frederick  Maurice.  They  were  contem- 
poraries, and  engaged,  though  not  always  for  the 
same  reasons,  in  the  controversies  which  made  for 
freedom  and  comprehension  ;  but  so  far  as  Jowett  is 


464 


CA  THOLICISM 


concerned  Maurice  might  as  well  never  have  been. 
The  mysticism,  the  neo-Platonic  idealism,  the  passion 
for  the  universal  and  positive,  of  the  latter,  provoked 
something  more  than  impatience  in  the  former ;  the 
more  that,  though  both  were  alike  English,  they  were 
divided  by  almost  racial  antipathies.  Even  where 
their  aims  agreed,  their  methods  and  means  differed. 
Maurice  influenced  men  on  their  spiritual  and  ethical 
side,  but  Jowett  on  the  intellectual.  The  one 
developed  moral  enthusiasm,  but  the  other  tended  to 
repress  it.  The  socialism  of  Maurice  was  a  generous 
endeavour  to  save  those  wronged  or  neglected  by 
society,  and  to  ameliorate  their  lot ;  but  the  work 
among  the  masses  which  Jowett  commended  to  his 
young  men  was  more  as  an  agency  for  their  own 
education.  It  is  no  less  curious  that  Mansel  and  Mill 
are  unknown  both  to  his  correspondence  and  his 
table-talk  ;  though  the  former  was  once  a  potent 
person  alike  in  the  thought,  the  politics,  and  the 
society  of  the  university,  more  justly  celebrated  for 
his  jeux  d? esprit  than  for  his  learning  or  his  philosophy  ; 
and  the  latter  was  a  great  authority  in  its  schools. 
Hegel  indeed  he  had  studied,  and  had  "  gained  more 
from  him  than  from  any  other  philosopher";  but  it 
was  from  his  historical  rather  than  speculative  side. 
And  to  Comte  he  had  a  positive  aversion. 

It  was  this  very  quality  of  mind  that  attracted 
him  to  Plato ;  and  it  was  also  the  secret  of  his 
imperfect  sympathy  with  Aristotle.  He  disliked  the 
logical  rigour,  the  intellectual  formalism,  the  ency- 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


465 


clopaedic  and  systematic  temper,  in  a  word,  the 
scholasticism  of  the  one  ;  he  delighted  in  the  imagi- 
native freedom,  the  variety,  the  inconclusiveness,  the 
habit  which  discussed  rather  than  solved  problems, 
which  he  found  in  the  other.  The  spirit  in  Plato 
which  shed  light  on  all  things  without  finally  adju- 
dicating on  any,  was  the  very  spirit  that  Jowett 
loved.  The  impersonated  and  suggestive  discussion 
suited  him  ;  it  exercised  mind  and  cultivated  the 
mind  by  its  exercise.  It  supplied  views  of  life,  of 
society,  and  the  State,  that  interested,  illumined, 
educated.  It  enabled  him  to  turn  Plato  into  an 
English  and  modern  classic,  and  to  make  him  a 
centre  round  which  thought  could  freely  play.  What 
he  gave  us  was  indeed  Jowett's  Plato  rather  than 
the  Plato  of  history,  of  philosophy,  or  of  classical 
scholarship. 

3.  We  may  better  illustrate  at  once  the  action 
and  effect  of  Jowett's  mental  characteristics  by  com- 
paring him  with  a  contemporary  with  whom  he  had 
much  in  common,  but  still  more  in  difference — Mark 
Pattison.  Both  were  academic  Liberals,  but  with 
such  radical  differences  as  expressed  fundamental 
unlikeness.  The  academic  ideal  of  Pattison  was  a 
university  consecrated  to  research ;  but  Jowett's  was 
a  college  devoted  to  the  discipline  and  the  culture 
of  mind.  Pattison  had  a  horror  of  the  mental  habits, 
the  formal  drill,  and  shallow  omniscience  created 
by  examinations  ;  but  Jowett  had  immense  faith  in 
their  educational  function  and  efficiency.    Both  were 

30 


466 


CATHOLICISM 


theological  Liberals,  but  Pattison's  Liberalism  was 
historical  and  critical,  Jowett's  was  personal  and 
intuitive.  Both  passed  through  the  Tractarian  storm, 
and  its  fires  scorched  Pattison,  while  they  hardly 
warmed  the  atmosphere  about  the  soul  of  Jowett. 
It  added  to  the  pessimistic  nature  of  the  one  a 
deeper  element  of  disappointment,  but  it  left  the 
sunny  optimism  of  the  other  unshadowed  and  un- 
disturbed. Both  were  successful  tutors,  and  were 
disappointed  in  their  first  expectation  of  the  head- 
ship of  their  respective  colleges.  The  disappoint- 
ment, added  to  the  loss  of  his  earlier  faith, 
permanently  embittered  Pattison  ;  but  it  only  made 
Jowett  a  more  potent  because  a  more  self-contained 
and  silent  man.  Yet  these  external  coincidences 
are  significant  only  in  so  far  as  they  indicate  internal 
differences,  which  had  their  more  characteristic  ex- 
pression in  the  region  of  their  studies  and  the  style 
of  their  work.  Pattison  had  more  the  mind  and 
temper  of  the  scholar,  Jowett  of  the  man  of  letters. 
The  history  of  scholarship  was  a  matter  of  extra- 
ordinary interest  to  Pattison  ;  he  loved  to  see  the 
action  of  intellectual  forces  in  any  given  time,  to 
analyze  the  ideas  and  expound  the  method  of  other 
ages  than  his  own  ;  to  trace  the  behaviour  of  societies 
which  embodied  systems,  of  tendencies  which  ex- 
pressed prevailing  habits  of  mind.  But  neither  the 
history  nor  the  archaeology  of  thought  had  any  real 
or  living  interest  for  Jowett.  Mind  was  to  him  too 
individual  a  thing  to  have  a  collective  history  or 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


467 


to  make  its  antecedents  worthy  of  scientific  investi- 
gation and  'construction.    Pattison  loved  the  great 
scholars  of  the  past.     The  labours,  the  struggles, 
the  poverty,  the  wanderings  of  Casaubon  directly 
appealed  to  him  ;  the  Stephenses  and  the  Scaligers 
were  names  he  loved  ;   the  parts  they  had  played 
in  the  revival  of  letters,   in   the  development  of 
printing,   in   editing    the    classics   and  advancing 
classical  scholarship,  made  them,  as  it  were,  men 
of  flesh  and  blood  to  his  imagination.    The  Patristic 
labours  of  the  Benedictines,  the  classical  erudition 
of  the  Jesuits,  their  use  of  it  for  their  revolutionary 
and  reactionary  purposes,  their  mode  of  assailing 
scholars  that  were  not  of  their  Order,  and  discredit- 
ing by  invented  scandal  the  work  of  men  they  could 
not  pervert ;  the  apostasy  of  Lipsius,  the  pomposity 
of  Salmasius,  and  the  ferocity  of  Milton,  all  interested 
him,  and  were  pressed  into  the  illustration  of  the 
history  and  the  growth  of  European  scholarship. 
But  Jowett  had  no  feeling  for  the  heroes  of  hu- 
manism ;  their  method  was  not  his  ;  their  implements 
were  less  perfect  than  his  own  ;  their  interpretations 
were  often  grotesque  ;  and  he  was  too  conscious  of 
the  difference  of  mind  and  times,  and  too  much 
interested  in  classical  literature  for  its  own  sake,  to 
care  much  for  the  men  who  had  contributed  to  the 
making  of  it  intelligible.    Even  in  his  own  country 
and  in  his  own  subject  this  was  true.    The  Cam- 
bridge Platonists  lay  almost  altogether  outside  the 
region  of  his   sympathies.     Bentley,  as  Professor 


468 


CA  THOLICISM 


Campbell  says,  seemed  to  Jowett  "wanting  in  judg- 
ment, which  is  the  first  element  in  criticism  "  ;  he 
was  only  an  example  "  of  the  baneful  influence  which 
a  great  philologer,  like  a  great  philosopher,  may 
have  on  whole  generations  of  his  followers."  He 
was,  "  upon  the  whole,  a  man  who  kept  bad  company 
in  literature."1  Selden,  indeed,  he  greatly  admired. 
But  it  was  not  the  Selden  of  the  De  Jure  Naturali 
et  Gentium,  nor  the  Selden  of  the  De  Diis  Syris ; 
rather  it  was  the  Selden  of  the  "  Table  Talk,"  who 
supplied  him  with  such  aphorisms  as,  doctrine  in 
theology  is  "  rhetoric  turned  into  logic,"  and  the 
Authorized  Version  of  the  Bible  is  "  the  best  trans- 
lation in  the  world."  And  so,  too,  he  loved  Samuel 
Johnson,  whose  criticism  of  life  and  of  men,  of 
books  and  of  manners,  made  him  a  man  after 
Jowett's  own  heart. 

§  V.  Jowett  as  Theologian  and  Churchman 

I.  The  mental  qualities  which  regulated  his  judg- 
ments and  achievements  in  the  field  of  scholarship 
determined  also  his  attitude  to  religious  and  theo- 
logical questions.  He  had  an  intensely  religious 
nature.  He  was  a  man  capable  of  doing  his  duty 
with  almost  stoic  severity ;  but  his  duty  was  apt 
to  be  conceived  under  rather  peculiar  and  personal 
forms.  There  is  no  truer  thing  said  by  Professor 
Lewis  Campbell  than  this :  "  What  Jowett  said  of 


"Life,"  ii.  186. 


OXFORD  AND  JOIVETT 


469 


Greek  literature  became  more  and  more  applicable 
to  himself:  'Under  the  marble  exterior  was  con- 
cealed a  soul  thrilling  with  spiritual  emotion.'"1 
He  progressively  realized  the  truth  of  Aristotle's 
words,  "  Pure  thought  alone  is  ineffectual."  But  the 
feelings  and  imagination  in  him  had  to  contend 
against  a  singularly  shy  and  yet  emotional  temper ; 
there  was  nothing  he  could  so  little  do  as  unbosom 
himself,  even  to  his  dearest  friends,  as  to  what  was 
deepest  in  his  heart.  Very  early  he  says  to  Dr. 
Greenhill :  "  Why  I  don't  write  to  you  oftener  is 
that  I  do  not  like  writing  about  religion ;  and  it 
seems  so  cold  and  prosy  to  write  to  an  intimate 
friend  about  anything  else." 2  This  difficulty  in- 
creased rather  than  lessened  with  the  progress  of 
the  years.  But  several  incidents  narrated  in  the 
"  Life "  show  his  simple  and  tender  piety,  such  as 
his  going  to  Sir  Henry  Acland  when  he  was  ill 
and  reading  to  him  "  in  that  small  voice,  which  once 
heard  was  never  forgot,"  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  St. 
John  ;  or  the  scene,  pathetic  in  its  sacred  simplicity, 
at  the  deathbed  of  Archbishop  Tait.  But  I  may 
be  allowed  to  tell,  because  it  is  so  significant  of 
both  men,  one  little  incident  which  is  not  told  in 
the  "  Life." 3  When  Robert  Browning  was  staying 
with  him  on,  I  think,  his  very  last  visit,  he  learned, 
when  it  was  too  late  to  attend,  that  the  Master  had 


"  i.  388.  2  i.  109. 

3  It  is  told,  somewhat  imperfectly,  in  Hon.  Lionel  A.  Tolle- 
mache's  Benjamin  Jowett,  p.  21. 


470 


CATHOLICISM 


conducted,  as  he  greatly  loved  to  do,  a  religious 
service  for  the  college  servants.    Browning  was  met 
by  a  friend   walking    in   the   Garden  Quadrangle 
greatly  agitated,  and  he  said  to  him,  "  The  Master 
is  the  very  soul  of  goodness ;  yet   he   makes  me 
quite  indignant.     He  is  hospitality  itself;  he  will 
eat  with  me,  talk  with  me,  walk  with  me,  read  with 
me,  take  me  into  his  very  bosom  ;  but  one  thing 
he  will  not  do,  he  will  not  pray  with   me."  But 
this  inability,  which  Browning  so  much  regretted, 
came  from  a  native  shyness  which  much  intercourse 
with  men  had  deepened,  and  which  the  fear  of  being 
irreligious  even  in  religion,  or  of  seeming  to  mean 
more  than  he  actually  said,  had  intensified.  But 
just  because  intimate  speech  on  the  mysteries  and 
higher  experiences  of  religion  was  so   difficult  to 
himself,  he  was  a  hard  critic  of  those  who  found 
it  easy.    Thus  he  says  :  "  I  never  hear  a  sermon  of 
which  it  is  possible  to  conceive  that  the  writer  has 
a  serious  belief  about  things  ;  if  you  could  but  cross- 
examine  him,  he  would  perjure  himself  every  other 
sentence." 1     He  was  anxious  to  be  veracious  in 
what  he  himself  said,  and  dreaded  very  early  in  his 
career  the  too  great   stress  which  "  the  ordinary 
divinity  of  the  day "  "  laid  on  words,"  creating  "  a 
sort  of  theological  slang,"  which  was  held  to  be  of 
"the   fundamentals  of    the   Christian   faith."  He 
quotes,  with  approval,  in  a  letter  to  Stanley,  the 


1  i-  153- 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


471 


words  of  a  lady  who  had  said  to  him  :  "  We  Liberals 
should  not  talk  about  freedom,  but  about  truth — 
that  is  the  flag  under  which  we  fight."  1 

2.  It  is  easy  to  misunderstand  Jowett's  attitude 
towards  Subscription,  and  to  be  unjust  to  him  on 
the  ground  of  it.  In  order  to  a  proper  appreciation 
of  his  attitude  two  things  have  to  be  remembered 
— the  mental  habit  which  we  have  already  described, 
and  his  own  personal  experiences.  The  long  en- 
forcement of  Subscription  at  the  universities  had  a 
most  injurious  effect  upon  the  mental  integrity  of 
the  subscribers.  The  mischief  began  at  a  very  early 
date.  Boys  who  could  not  possibly  know  the  mean- 
ing of  the  act  had  to  subscribe  ;  they  must  in  almost 
every  case  have  done  it  as  a  simple  matter  of 
academic  form  ;  but  the  doing  of  it  at  all  was  an 
initial  vice  accentuated  at  every  stage  in  the  aca- 
demic career.  Many  of  the~  men  who  subscribed  as 
a  condition  of  holding  a  fellowship  did  it  intending 
to  do  with  the  articles  of  belief  very  much  as  they 
meant  to  do  with  the  statutes  of  the  college — adapt 
them  as  far  as  they  legally  could  to  existing  con- 
ditions. There  was  thus  begotten  in  the  minds  of 
the  more  thoughtful  the  worst  of  all  attitudes  to 
religious  belief — that  of  giving  a  formal  assent  to 
what  was  understood  not  to  represent  internal  con- 
viction. This  mischief  was  immensely  aggravated 
by  the  miserable  partisan  politics  which  governed 


1  i.  299. 


472  CATHOLICISM 

the  university  during  the  major  part  of  Jowett's 
career,  and  which  had,  by  means  of  tests,  instituted 
an  "  abominable  system  of  terrorism."  He  had  seen 
Subscription  used  by  the  aggressive  Tractarians  to 
damage  Hampden.  He  had  seen  men  who  had 
resisted  Hampden's  elevation  to  the  bishopric  solac- 
ing their  souls  with  the  idea  that  his  act  of 
Subscription  cancelled  their  obligation  to  further 
resistance.  He  had  seen  the  same  weapon  of  Sub- 
scription turned  against  the  very  Tractarian  party 
which  had  made  it  so  powerful  an  instrument  of 
offence,  and  he  had  witnessed  this  misuse  culminate 
in  the  comic  tragedy  of  the  degradation  of  Ward. 
He  had  seen  "  all  Balliol,  as  usual,  furious " 1  over 
the  giving  of  an  honorary  degree  to  the  then 
American  Minister,  because  he  had  been  a  Socinian 
clergyman.  And  later  in  his  own  experience  it  was 
turned  into  the  means  of  inflicting  cruel  humiliation 
on  a  proud  and  sensitive  spirit  ;  for  he  was  com- 
pelled to  re-subscribe  before  being  allowed  to  enter 
on  his  Professorship.  And  this  was  done  at  the 
instance  of  men  who  were  in  certain  respects  as 
faithless  to  the  Articles  as  he  was  himself,  and  as 
little  scrupulous  in  their  interpretation  of  their  obli- 
gations when  the  literal  sense  seemed  contrary  to 
their  convictions.  The  subtleties  of  "  Tract  XC." 
show  how  fast  and  loose  the  ultra-orthodox,  when 
their  own  views  were  at  stake,  could  play  with  the 


1  Church,  Life  and  Letters^  43. 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


473 


very  formula  which  they  could  not  allow  their  op- 
ponents any  latitude  in  interpreting.  The  slicing, 
as  it  were,  of  the  Articles,  which  is  not  uncommon 
even  now,  was  then  a  fully  perfected  art  ;  with  the 
aggravation  that  the  men  who  did  it  most  effectually 
in  their  own  interests,  were  the  least  tolerant  to  the 
men  who  attempted  the  same  thing,  but  because 
of  another  conscience.  The  whole  attitude  was, 
therefore,  that  of  the  legalist  rather  than  of  the 
moralist ;  formula;  which  were  meant  to  express 
high  truths  were  construed  as  effete  statutes  to  which 
conscientious  acquiescence  could  not  be  expected. 

3.  This  is  said,  of  course,  in  explanation  of  Jowett's 
attitude,  not  in  justification  of  it.  He  and  his  oppo- 
nents were  alike  latitudinarian — he  in  one  direction, 
they  in  another.  Nor  did  his  attitude  imply  indiffer- 
ence to  theology,  for  in  it  he  had  from  the  first  very 
great  interest.  He  early  wished  to  see  a  theological 
school  founded  in  the  university,  though,  by  a  curious 
Nemesis,  when  it  was  founded,  he  was  excluded  from 
the  theological  board.  His  reason  was  that  he  wished 
to  see  the  clergy  trained  in  the  university  rather  than 
in  diocesan  colleges.  And  he  held  that  the  more 
liberal  the  education,  the  more  liberal  would  be  the 
clerical  thought :  for  the  highest  theory  of  the  office 
was  held  by  the  men  who  had  the  least  fitness  for  it. 
For  the  clerical  order,  as  such,  he  had  no  admiration  ; 
he  rather  thought  that  "  loyalty  to  the  clergy  was 
treachery  to  the  Church."  He  was,  if  one  may  say 
so,  a  rigorous  individualist  in  religion  ;  he  loved  to 


474 


CATHOLICISM 


elaborate  his  own  belief,  to  let  his  mind  play  upon 
history  and  dogmas,  and  to  translate  them  into  the 
ideals  which  could  regulate  his  life.  In  a  letter  he 
describes  "  the  true  basis  of  religion  as  the  life  and 
death  of  Christ  "  ;  but  what  that  means  he  straight- 
way proceeds  to  explain  thus  :  "  The  life  and  death 
of  Christ  in  the  soul,  the  imitation  of  Christ ;  the 
inspiration  of  Christ ;  the  sacrifice  of  self ;  the  being 
in  the  world,  but  not  of  it ;  the  union  with  God 
and  the  will  of  God  such  as  Christ  had."  1  He  con- 
ceived the  ideal  as  the  essential  element  in  religion. 
Christ  was  to  him  an  ideal  rather  than  a  reality  :  a 
name  that  denoted  an  object  of  reverence  and  thought, 
rather  than  any  historical  person.  This  is  perhaps 
putting  it  more  sharply  than  he  himself  would  have 
done,  though  he  has  stated  his  position  with  almost 
equal  precision.  He  wanted  to  see  the  personal 
Christ  become  an  ideal  Christ,  and  this  pass  into 
the  idea  of  Goodness.2  But  he  was  not  a  man  that 
inconsistencies  terrified.  He  had  moods  that  needed 
only  the  ideal,  and  moods  that  craved  for  the 
historical ;  but  he  loved  to  find  himself  in  the 
Gospels,  just  as  he  liked  to  make  Plato  the  vehicle 
and  medium  of  his  own  thought.  It  is  one  of  the 
points  where  the  action  of  a  loved  author  may  be 
subtly  seen  in  similar  manifestations  in  the  most 
opposite  of  minds.  Jowett  had  too  sane  an  intellect 
to  allegorize  ;   but  Plato  taught  him  to  idealize.  He 


1  ii.  273.      s  ii.  15. 


OXFORD  AND  JOIVETT 


475 


learned  a  mysticism  that  made  him  independent  of 
history,  but  dependent  on  the  ideas  which  were  the 
ultimate  realities  of  his  life. 

4.  As  Pattison  exhibited  a  contrast  to  Jowett's 
attitude  to  scholarship,  so  we  may  find  in  Dean 
Stanley  a  contrast  to  his  attitude  to  theology.  The 
affinities  with  Stanley,  both  in  thought  and  aim,  were 
far  more  intimate  than  those  he  had  with  Pattison. 
They  formed,  indeed,  as  near  a  parallel  to  Jonathan 
and  David  as  modern  conditions  permit  of.  They 
had  almost  everything  in  common — they  thought 
together,  planned  together,  travelled  together,  worked 
together.  They  were  in  constant  consultation  about 
the  most  intimate  matters  of  private  belief  and  public 
conduct.  Their  friendship,  indeed,  was  almost  ideal : 
but  in  its  unity  it  represented  characteristic  and 
fundamental  differences.  Stanley's  was  a  picturesque 
mind  ;  he  had,  as  it  were,  a  sensuous  imagination ;  its 
images  came  through  the  senses,  and  were  clothed  in 
the  raiment  the  senses  supplied.  Where  allegory  and 
analogy  stood  to  Newman,  history  and  geography 
stood  to  Stanley.  But  he  did  not  use  them  as  the 
true  romanticist  did.  He  loved  to  people  a  place  with 
the  figures  of  the  past ;  but  the  more  unlike  these 
figures  were,  the  more  picturesque  the  contrast  they 
offered  to  each  other,  the  more  attractive  did  they 
seem  to  Stanley.  If  we  may  so  distinguish,  we  may 
say  that  he  was  a  cosmopolitical  rather  than  a  medi- 
aeval romanticist.  For  him  romance  lay  not  in  the 
imagined  chivalry  of  a  time  behind  us,  though  it  was 


4"6 


CATHOLICISM 


a  time  that  had  never  been  ;  but  rather  in  the  dis- 
similarities of  the  persons,  the  times,  and  the  causes 
he  could  bring  together  and  combine  or  contrast  in 
the  strong  light  and  shade  of  his  pictorial  pages. 

But  the  creations  of  the  sensuous  imagination  did 
not  appeal  to  Jowett.  Pictorial  history  was  to  him  a 
weariness — almost,  indeed,  a  childishness.  While  he 
had  no  love  for  the  sensuous  image,  he  had  an  intense 
love  for  the  ideal.  He  delighted  to  translate  a  cruder 
into  a  riper  conception,  an  inchoate  into  a  simple  and 
classic  thought.  But  this  was  not  the  most  funda- 
mental distinction  between  the  two  friends.  Stanley 
was  a  born  warrior ;  he  was  a  man  with  a  mission, 
and  the  mission  was  one  which  could  be  carried  out 
only  by  an  aggressive  policy.  He  had  inherited 
Arnold's  great  idea,  and  wanted  the  Church  to  be 
co-extensive  with  the  State,  as  varied,  as  rich  in  the 
elements  and  persons  it  comprehended.  All  the  fine 
figures  which  he  loved  in  the  past  he  rejoiced  to  co- 
ordinate in  an  ideal  unity,  which  he  would  fain  have 
translated  in  the  present  into  the  practical  unity  of 
an  organized  religious  society.  So  he  laboured  to 
modify  Subscription,  that  it  might  cease  to  be  a 
barrier  to  the  conscientious  Dissenter  ;  and  he  strove 
to  make  Westminster  Abbey  not  simply  the  tomb  of 
English  heroes  and  saints,  but  the  home  of  English 
religion,  where  the  representatives  of  its  varied  sec- 
tions and  societies  could  meet  in  worship  and  partici- 
pate in  the  common  sacraments  of  their  religion. 
But  Jowett  had  no  mission  to  be  progressive  or 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


All 


polemical  in  behalf  of  those  who  stood  outside  the 
society  to  which  he  belonged.  He  could  hardly 
understand  why  a  man  should  make  difficulties  about 
Subscription,  when  it  had  become  too  conventional  a 
thing  to  be  taken  seriously.  It  seemed  to  him  more 
than  a  trifle  foolish — indeed,  only  a  sort  of  illiberal 
scrupulosity  —  to  stand  aloof  from  the  National 
Church  because  you  did  not  agree  with  its  creed. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  nobody  did  agree  with  that  creed. 
Time  and  use  had  modified  Subscription  sufficiently 
to  ease  the  tender  conscience  of  its  pain. 

This,  indeed,  is  putting  it  more  sharply  than  is 
quite  just,  if  it  be  understood  to  apply  to  academic  as 
well  as  ecclesiastical  tests.  He  looked  at  things  as 
they  were,  found  men  possessed  of  differences,  and  in 
order  to  make  the  university  national,  which  tests  pre- 
vented it  being,  he  came  to  urge  their  abolition.  But 
in  the  ecclesiastical  sphere  his  attitude  was  rather 
"  use  your  liberty,"  than  "  make  liberty  a  consti- 
tutional and  legal  thing."  It  would  hardly  be  too 
much  to  say  that  Jowett  never  understood  either  the 
Dissenter  or  Dissent,  though  nothing  could  exceed 
his  personal  kindness  and  consideration  to  the  Dissen- 
ters he  knew,  or  anything  be  stronger  than  his  deter- 
mination that  men,  whether  in  the  university  or  in  the 
college,  should  have  their  [due,  irrespective  of  creed. 
He  was  perhaps,  in  the  heart  of  him,  inclined  to  think 
that  to  be  scrupulous  about  Conformity  was  to  make 
much  ado  about  nothing.  The  pathos  of  the  Dissen- 
ter's position  did  not  appeal  to  him.    He  had  difficulty 


473 


CATHOLICISM 


in  conceiving  that  a  man  might  have  an  absorbing 
desire  to  be  a  member  of  a  great  university,  and  yet 
feel  under  an  imperious  obligation  to  refuse  member- 
ship on  the  only  terms  that  were  then  possible.  He 
had  in  his  secret  mind  the  suspicion  that  Dissent  was 
a  sort  of  obstinacy,  an  illiberal  rigour  and  vigour  of 
mind  that  education  would  soften  and  finally  elimi- 
nate. We  are  often  less  patient  with  those  who  agree 
with  us  in  part  than  with  those  who  wholly  differ 
from  us.  Social  toleration  of  a  Dissenter  is  probably 
a  rarer  thing  than  social  toleration  of  an  infidel  or  an 
agnostic.  The  one  is  a  vulgar  middle-class  form  of 
religion  ;  the  other  implies  some  intellectual  distinc- 
tion and  independence.  This  attitude  was  not  with- 
out a  parallel  in  Jowett's  own  experience.  When  he 
was  most  suspected  and  persecuted,  a  friend  called  to 
tell  him  that  the  orthodox  felt  more  kindly  to  Con- 
greve  and  the  thoroughgoing  Positivists  than  to  him. 
But  in  nothing  did  he  so  show  himself  the  philosopher, 
as  in  the  equanimity  with  which  he  bore  suspicion 
and  isolation. 

These  sentences  must  not  be  construed  to  mean  any 
lack  of  appreciation  of  Jowett's  services  to  the  cause 
of  freedom,  whether  in  the  college  or  the  university. 
These  services  were  varied,  distinguished,  and  effec- 
tual. It  is,  indeed,  one  thing  to  be  opposed  to  tests, 
and  quite  another  either  to  understand  or  to  appre- 
ciate the  action  of  a  man  who  will  endure  serious  civil 
or  social  or  academic  loss  rather  than  submit  his  con- 
science to  their  yoke.    But  Jowett's  merit  lies  not  so 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


479 


much  in  the  region  of  theory  as  of  practice  ;  he  was 
much  more  than  an  advocate  of  abolition  ;  he  honestly 
tried  to  act  justly  towards  the  idea  of  an  open  college 
and  a  free  university.  This  is  by  no  means  so  easy  a 
thing  as  it  may  look  :  and  it  is  especially  hard  in  the 
case  of  one  who  is  head  of  a  college,  which  is  by  its 
very  history,  constitution,  and  traditions  a  closer  and 
more  rigid  society  than  the  university  of  which  it  is  a 
component  part.  The  repeal  of  tests  may  be  a  simple 
legislative  process,  but  the  enforcement,  even  of  the 
repealed  tests,  may  be  regarded  by  men  of  a  certain 
order  of  conscientiousness  as  an  administrative  expe- 
dient, which  they  feel  bound  in  some  form  to  follow. 
One  of  the  last  things  that  the  head,  or  even  in  cer- 
tain cases  the  tutor,  of  a  college  with  the  history  and 
antecedents  of  the  Oxford  colleges,  may  be  able  to 
realize,  is  that  his  college  has  ceased  to  be  an  ecclesi- 
astical institution,  and  has  become  a  place  of  educa- 
tion open  to  men  of  all  churches  and  all  creeds. 
Jowett  was  far  too  honourable  a  man  ever  so  to  abuse 
his  academic  position  as  to  use  it  for  the  purpose  of 
winning  ingenuous  minds  from  their  ancestral  faith. 
On  this  point  illustration  would  be  easy  and  grateful, 
but  it  must  suffice  simply  to  say  that  he  seems  to  me 
to  have  been  an  academic  statesman  and  administra- 
tor who  knew  how  and 

"  when  to  take 
Occasion  by  the  hand,  and  make 
The  bounds  of  freedom  wider  yet." 

5.  But  the  contrast  to  Stanley  suggests  another 


48o 


CA  TH0L1C1SM 


and  most  distinctive  characteristic.  Jowett  was  one 
of  the  most  persistent  of  men,  though  one  of  the  least 
polemical.  If  he  found  his  way  barred,  or  if  to  sur- 
mount the  bar  threatened  to  be  too  toilsome  a  pro- 
cess, he  turned  aside  to  seek  a  passage  by  some  other 
way.  He  had  such  a  feeling  for  the  conditions  of 
moral  influence,  that  he  would  not  dissipate  it  by 
allowing  it  to  break  against  obstacles  that  were  for 
the  moment  irremovable.  He  preferred  to  go  round 
the  mountain  rather  than  scale  the  heights.  Thus 
when  the  storm  was  raised,  first  by  his  Epistles  of 
Paul,  and  next  by  his  essay  in  Essays  and  Reviews, 
he  simply  dropped  theology  for  the  time  being  and 
turned  to  Plato  and  philosophy.  So,  too,  when  he 
missed  the  Mastership  and  found  the  college  uncon- 
genial, he  forsook  the  Hall  and  the  common-room, 
lived  much  alone,  devoted  himself  to  his  work  and  to 
his  pupils,  preparing  for  the  day  when  he  could 
emerge  from  his  seclusion  and  play  a  more  command- 
ing part  in  the  college.  So,  too,  in  the  matter  of  his 
Professorship,  he  felt  keenly  the  insults  to  which  he 
was  exposed  both  in  assuming  the  Chair  and  when 
refused  the  salary  that  was  his  due  ;  but  he  devoted 
himself  to  the  duties  of  his  Chair,  leaving  chivalrous 
friends  to  champion  his  cause.  And  his  method  was 
as  well  suited  to  his  ultimate  success  as  to  his  imme- 
diate peace  of  mind. 

But  enough  has  been  said  to  indicate  Jowett's  place 
and  function  in  the  making  of  modern  Oxford.  He 
was  an  educator  rather  than  a  scholar,  a  man  of 


OXFORD  AND  JOWETT 


letters  rather  than  a  man  of  learning.  He  is  distin- 
guished at  once  by  the  comparative  feebleness  of  his 
scientific  interest  and  the  intensity  of  his  interest  in 
persons.  He  was  an  enthusiast  for  the  creation  of 
the  best  men  for  the  service  of  the  Church  and  State  ; 
and  he  believed  that  there  was  no  place  for  their 
creation  equal  to  a  well-equipped,  well-governed,  and 
well-disciplined  college,  where  the  most  cultured 
minds  of  the  present  introduced  the  learners  to  the 
classical  literatures  of  the  past.  And  he  lived  to 
make  the  college  he  ruled  what  he  conceived  a  college 
ought  to  be.  It  was  a  noble  ambition  nobly  carried 
out.  And  the  attitude  of  his  own  mind  qualified  him 
for  the  work  he  elected  to  do.  He  educated  by  sug- 
gestion and  criticism  rather  than  system  and  con- 
struction, stimulated  by  questioning  rather  than 
informed  by  instruction.  But,  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  his  educational  method  or  his  literary 
work,  one  thing  is  certain — he  will  be  remembered 
above  all  his  contemporaries  as  the  man  who  lived 
for  his  college,  and  made  it  a  supreme  force  in  the 
academic  life  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
June,  1897. 


Butler  &>  Tanner,  The  Sehuood  Printing  Works,  Frome,  and  London 

31 


